Day 5

This morning we peeked out of our tent to be greeted with the full grandeur of the Mojave. We managed to make it through the night without freezing our butts off thanks to our extra down blanket we had stashed in the truck. Waking up wasn't a chore at all and we set about making an awesome breakfast of coffee, bacon, and eggs (car camping rocks!). While Mike was tending the frying of the bacon, Laura wandered around and took photos of all the different types of cactus while gathering together all the trash (not too much, just your standard beer cans and bottles, cig butts, etc) to be disposed of at the next rest stop. Mike and I believe strongly in the principles of Leave No Trace (link: http://www.outdoors.org/education/lnt/lnt-principles.cfm) so we always try to pick up what trash we can at the places we stay so it'll be as nice as possible for the next people.
Anyway, I digress. While I was walking around picking things up I happened across one lizard under a rock and a tiny scorpion(!) under a can. Mike and I then spent a good while after breakfast looking for critters under rocks but had no further luck. Mike'll just have to believe me that there really were scorpions.


After packing up we made our way past the incredible Mojave sand dunes (which were formed from wind blowing the sand from a nearby dry lake) to the Kelso Depot Visitor's Center which serves as the main visitor's center for the park. The building was built in 1924 by the Union Pacific Railroad to serve as a transfer point and water station for the steam locomotives. The area had a boom during World War II due to, in part, the mining opportunities in the area and the need for an outpost on the way to Los Angeles. Nowadays the town is pretty run-down with the exception of the Depot building itself which was renovated and re-opened in 2004, 10 years after the Mojave was declared a National Preserve. After a quick informational video about the park and a nice chat with one of the park rangers we headed out to the largest and densest grove of joshua trees in the world (even more impressive than Joshua Tree National Park 60 miles south of the Mojave!). We took another ~4 mile hike to a vantage point on Teutonia Peak (5,755 ft.) while working on our tans, then headed back to the truck to set out towards Arizona. Four and a half hours later, and another 3,000 ft. of elevation gain, we found ourselves out of the high desert. We were once again surrounded by snow and conifers as we passed through the Kaibab National Forest on I-40. We decided to call it a day and pulled into Williams, AZ (6,800 ft.) where we found a cheap room with wi-fi so we could update our blog. Tomorrow morning we're off to the Grand Canyon.

(Note: Wow! It's awesome to know that there are people out there actually looking at our blog... once again, thank you guys for reading along and keeping us motivated to record all this. The comments are fun to read but we've been having problems deciphering who's who. If you would like to help lessen our confusion, please end a comment with your name or some sort of clue as to who you are... Unless of course you'd like to remain anonymous and keep us guessing whether we know you or if you are an obsessive internet stalker... THANK YOU GUYS!)