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29.10.2003: Indio - Mojave Desert
When we got up we found that the whole valley was in a smoke cloud from the fires! So we knew it was time to move on! After a hot shower (Kirsten got wet again at the dump station!) we filled up with propane gas and headed off East along Highway 10 and then cut off North along a road along the east side of Joshua Tree NP.
As we turned off at a junction it was time for lunch and a toilet stop. Of course we have everything with us! So we parked up at the side of the road and made bacon and eggs. We were going to Mojave Desert and wanted to find a road that went North according to the maps. What we found was a very bumpy dirt road and got shaken and very stirred! It took over half an hour to drive 6 miles! Then we eventually came to a tarmacced road - the one we should have driven down in the first place!
By this time we were looking for petrol stations as we were running a bit low. Every town we got to didn`t have a petrol station and we passed loads of old petrol stations that had long closed down. Eventually we did find petrol but it was twice as much as normal prices. Plus we had to pay by cash - we were running out of cash aswell!!
It was 4-30pm by the time we eventually got to Mojave Desert, to a campground at Mitchell Caverns. The visitor centre was already closed so we walked along one of the trails and met 2 people who said it was closed off further down, for tours only. And we hadn`t escaped the smoke cloud either! There had been a really funny orangy light all day, due to the smoke cloud. We decided not to stay in the campground for $10 just for toilets but went back to a junction we`d passed on the way where there was space to park up.
We made something to eat and watched the red sun glowing through the smoke. Really odd! By 6-25pm it was pitch black. Not a light in sight! In fact, we were the only light source for miles around! It was also quite cold - cold enough for us to put on our fleece jackets! Well we`ve been used to it being really hot! After looking at all the maps we have and doing a bit of forward planning, we had a wash and went to bed in the middle of a desert and the sound of silence!
30.10.2003: Mojave Desert - Lake Havasu
By 8am it was too hot to sleep anymore. The sun was shining and there wasn`t any smoke cloud in sight. Probably because it was also very windy! We set up the water bag on the bike racks at the back of Winnie to use as a shower. Then we drove to the next campsite where we found out about a trail.
We met an American couple, Greg and Laurie from Washington State and did the 1 hour trail with them. Part of the walk consisted of clambering down rocks through a gorge where metal rings had been put into the rocks to help walkers climb down! Kirsten took photos of Greg and Laurie and then her own batteries went dead so they took photos of us and will send them per email to us! We walked around a large rocky outcrop and passed some petroglyphs, Indian rock paintings, and back to the car park.
Greg and Laurie told us that to go North through the Mojave we would have to drive 1.5 hours over a very bumpy dirt road and didn`t advise doing that in Winnie! After our escapades on exactly that kind of road yesterday we didn`t really want to repeat the experience! So we had to change plans again.
We made some lunch in the car park and then went to fill up our water tanks. The problem was that the water taps didn`t have a threaded screw on the end so Kirsten tried to hold the one end of our water hose under the tap whilst Helen held the other end into Winnie. Helen stayed dry but Kirsten got very wet. So we decided to swap. Somehow Helen managed to shoot out a stream of water in an arc, all over Kirstens back!! Who says there`s no showers in the desert!
The new plan was to drive further East into Arizona to go to Lake Havasu City and once we`d filled up with petrol in California we found out that the petrol in Arizona is a lot cheaper!! Oh well, you live and learn.
It also got windier and this meant that Winnie was getting more and more difficult to drive as he kept getting thrown from side to side by the gusts of wind. But we managed to get to London Bridge in one piece.
London Bridge is an actual bridge from London dated 1831. It was auctioned off in 1968 and bought by an American who shipped it over here, brick by brick, and rebuilt it. Unfortunately it has been surrounded by trashy little tourist shops with fake English phone boxes and a double decker bus! Blackpool all over again! Terrible. I was glad that we`d gone through a time zone getting into Arizona and that it was an hour later (5-30pm) - so most places were already shut! The bridge over the Colorado River, though, was worth seeing!
We then drove further South to a camp ground next to the Colorado River where we had a hook up and could catch up writing our website diary. Plus there are very clean, hot showers here! That's Kirstens third one today!
31.10.2003: Lake Havasu - 29 Palms
After a shower and breakfast we went for a walk along the Colorado River in the sun. We left the campsite at 12-15 pm and drove South to Parker Dam. What we didn`t know at the time is that it's the deepest dam in the world! We read that later on in a leaflet we picked up!
Then we drove into the town of Parker. We couldn`t find a visitor centre but we did find an accessory shop for motor homes. So we decided to look for something to mend our water hose. We also found a book swapping section. We thought we`d found the right attachment for our water hose but needed to look at Winnie before buying anything. So we fetched 2 books to swap and then Kirsten got a screwdriver to look at our water attachment - one of the turning handles is broken so we thought we could replace the whole thing if we could find out how to get the original one off. Not as easy as it looks! Kirsten poked a small circular ball in the centre with the screwdriver and immediately got showered with a heavily pressurised spurt of water that hit her straight in the face and soaked her shirt!! Neither of us had expected that! In fact Kirsten was so shocked she couldn`t speak!! (That's a first!)
We just killed ourselves laughing in the middle of the street and Kirsten all wet! Finally, we recovered enough for Kirsten to change her shirt and to take 2 books in to swap. We decided against trying to replace the whole water attachment (not surprising after our efforts!) and just bought an end part to stop the hose from leaking!
After buying a take-away pizza from Pizza Hut and eating it in Winnie on the car park (!), we drove back into California and stopped at a shoe tree!! (Photo). Then we drove to a town called Twentynine Palms. We asked at the Joshua Tree Visitor centre if we could park up on their car park for the night as it was already dark. We weren`t allowed to but they told us we could park around the corner by the Catholic Church. So we picked our spot for the night and used the visitor centre toilets as they were left open. We heated up the rest of our pizza from lunch, washed up and Helen wrote her diary.
