Mohave Desert

We visited the Mohave Desert today, and it was hot! 

Today was our longest day of driving.  It was about 4 hours from Bakersfield, CA, to the Mohave Desert. Along the way we passed a windmill farm, and I had never seen so many windmills before!

 The landscape became more desert-like, and we passed many mesas. 

 

 We arrived at the Mohave National Preserve, and the visitors center was actually open!   It is only open on Saturdays.  There were many warnings about the extreme heat and being sure to carry water, so we did. 

 First, we walked down a very rocky trail that Geoff had visited with his geology class in grad school.  This picture shows the sort of rocks we were climbing down.  Part of the trail required using hand rings that were too far apart for me, so we turned around and went down the other path. 

 This is more the kind of desert I was expecting. 

 There were many interesting rock formations. 

 The moon was coming up!

 The expanse of desert was huge and beautiful.  There were lots of scrubby desert plants, including cactus and Joshua trees. 

 This is the path we followed back.  It was marked by stones, and sometimes was hard to tell from the gully.  There were lots of signs warning about cows, but we saw no live cows, only evidence of them. 

We had drank two bottles of water by the time we got back to the car.  We had seen all of Mohave that we wanted to see, so I drove us out of the park.  It was great fun driving the Mustang, and I ended up driving for about two hours, because the next closest rest stop was closed.  It was a four hour drive to Williams, AZ, where we are spending the night.  Neither of us were particularly hungry, because we had been eating in the car, but Geoff went to get gas, and came back with shakes from McDonald's, and they tasted really good!