Mostly Plants

We arrived at Las Vegas McCarran on schedule, and to my surprise, Delta got all of our bags there on schedule as well. The only thing that didn’t go according to plan was that Thrifty was out of midsize sedans, so we got a convertible instead. Fun, but not so practical–after we got all of our gear and groceries, there wasn’t enough room in the trunk to put the top down! Still, Las Vegas was sunny and 75 degrees–perfect weather! After a stop at Whole Foods and REI (conveniently across the street from one another), we were on the road out to Mojave National Preserve. Shortly after we turned into the preserve, we passed through a forest of Joshua Trees. We stopped at the visitors center to use the restrooms, and ran into a couple of Iowans who were sleeping in their car in the park. One was hunting for trilobytes!

After passing almost all the way through the preserve, we made camp at the foot of Kelso Dunes, at an off-road distributed tent site. As the sun set, we expected to be alone in the wilderness, and sat down in my tent with a bottle of wine to escape the cold and ferocious wind gusts.

As we sat in pleasant silence, we heard the engine noise of several cars passing, then passing again, then pulling into our campsite. In total, the convoy consisted of 3 15-passenger vans, 3 big SUVs, and a pickup truck with all of their gear in it. We were being invaded by Boy Scouts of America Troop 157, from Apple Valley, California. I walked outside and greeted the scoutmaster, who apologized for disturbing us and told us that he would try to keep the boys quiet. This, of course, was a futile effort. There were plenty of other places that they could have camped, but they chose to cuddle up next to our little patch of desert. The upside was that they had trucked in firewood, and had a warm fire going in the morning. The downside was that the ladies were not so thrilled about peeing in the brush in the presence of so many adolescent boys.

We went to bed very early, after looking at stars under a half moon. When I arose around nautical dawn, Scorpio was bright on the Southern horizon, and the moon was set. Such a starfield I have not seen in a long time.

At our breakfast-of-oats, we discovered that the coffee I had picked up in Vegas was decaf. I was laughing about it, but Laura was not. She texted Briony to pick up some regular coffee in LA before joining us at JoTr later that day.

Early that morning, the boy scouts tromped off across the brush to climb the dunes, and to go sledding on them. We headed up around 9:30, when it was still cold and breezy enough that I was wearing my sheep. The Dunes are part of a large sandfield called the Devil’s Playground on the windward size of the Granite and Providence Mountains, and the tallest dune rises about 600 feet above the desert. Crossing the brush on the way to the dune, we passed a few signs of life that we would not have expected: a big bush with red flowers, roadrunner tracks, and the petrified scats of a bighorned sheep and a coyote!

We eventually reached the base of the dune itself, and climbed to the top. Running down the steep side of the dune, we were able to make the “booming” sound, also called the “singing sands,” that only five dunes in the world are capable of. It sounds kind of like a piston engine on an airplane.