Miles travelled: 4487 – 4893 (day total of 406 miles)
Weather: clear, sunny, and hot. Top temperature 102 Fahrenheit
Highlight of the day: McCallum Trail
Scott didn’t sleep last night, despite being quite comfortable! A prime mover with earthmoving equipment arrived at around 6.30am, so Scott decided he may as well stop trying to sleep while Disa stayed in denial.
The camping area was in a nice protected little valley with California Oaks, deer, and quails. There is a porta potty and sturdy wooden picnic tables. It is cool and shady, but once you leave and are on the more exposed road you realise how warm it is! The turn-off from 166 is at N34 57.919 W119 43.695; camp area is approximately 7 miles from the turn-off.
First pot of trip coffee made on Maria’s Primus stove in Maria’s coffee pot. We just experimented with 2 mugs of water and two level-ish scoops of Gevalia – came out quite nicely! Scott heated a nail in the flame and melted the fringes of cloth left in the middle of the curtain grommets. We broke our fast on bagels with cream cheese & capsicum tapenade and hommus. Scott saw his first deer!
We tinkered around a bit – first morning settling in – and were on the road by 8.05 am. Scott was driving, so once we were on the road and there was no navigating to be done, Disa phoned dad to get his mobile number and let him know all was well and we’d made our first camp with no worries. Then Disa thought she’d see how well the converter worked and see about charging the laptop (it had been used a bit on battery the night before to write yesterday’s log), so she couldn’t help phoning dad back when we were tooling down the road, GPSr connected to the laptop and showing us exactly where we were on the map, connected to the van as power source, music by Alex Lloyd playing. She also phoned Maria from Bakersfield, but we kept driving under overpasses so that was just a short chat!
We took 178 through the Kern Valley, which was quite beautiful, then stopped after Lake Isabella to see some stone depressions in rock on the roadside; Maria had given us the coordinates – Scott’s first native American relics. We then continued on, stopping at Barstow to purchase 48 bottles of water, and pushed on. Our original goal was Joshua Tree NP to stay the night there and do the Pushawalla track the next day, however we realised how far that was from any of the entries to the National Park so decided to find a camp closer. We went to the Coachella Valley Preserve and found the oasis lovely. So we decided to take the McCallum track to the next oasis, which had a surprising amount of water in it!
We headed into town to try to find a camp and some food. We went to Palm Springs looking for a WalMart as Mary had mentioned that WalMart allowed overnight parking in their car parks – well, not in Palm Springs! But all was not lost – we drove past Forest Lawn and found the geocache there.
Back at Thousands Palms, Scott had his first semi-diner experience: Denny’s. We were uncertain how to tip, so had to ask the man manning the till! Their car park was too small to camp in, so we went a bit out of town to the Desert MultiChurch car park where I am drinking some wine right now!