Day Forty-Five

I was right about the aroma of gin. We awoke to find ourselves surrounded by thousands of small, twisted but very mature juniper trees bursting with smoky blue berries. These along with many other desert plant species were unfamiliar to me.

Ranch in Mojave

Zoobley and I spent the day exploring the Mid Hills and Hole-in-the-Wall areas of the Preserve. At more than one million acres, the Mojave is endless valleys bordered by abrupt red, brown, and green cliffs all teeming with unseen wildlife and occasionally punctuated by house sized boulders stacked by giants. Some areas are thick with otherworldly forests of Joshua trees, others are thick with juniper and pine, and still others are seas of sand. The one constant is silence. Solitude, thy name is Mojave!

This is the first national park I have been to that allows visitors to camp at undeveloped sites on back roads without a permit so Zoobley and I are truly camped in the middle of nowhere tonight. Our federal government is a mess and nobody can seem to agree on what caused the mess or how to fix it, but surely everyone can agree that a government that sets aside treasures like The Great Smoky Mountains, Big Bend, Death Valley, The Everglades, and Mojave is an instance of elected officials working in the best interest of their constituents. Zoobley and I can only hope that the greedy, power hungry old men in Washington don't spend too much more of the Park Service budget on bombs for oil rich third world countries.