Carrizo Plain and SE Nevada - February 2021

 2/22-  Our first trip of the year, and finally! We are on a road trip to the desert, so good to be warm for a change, and avoid the snowstorms on the road. Our first stop, the Carrizo Plain. Becoming a favorite, at the Selby campground.

Night 2 takes us to Lake Isabella. Campgrounds were closed due to covid19, but one overflow area by the dam was open. Very cool place, it was dispersed camping, so we drove right up near the water's edge and pulled out our lawn chairs. Beautiful. We were pretty much alone, there were only 2 or 3 other campers on the water's edge in this huge area at the lakeside. 

Then, off past the Mojave desert to Tecopa to stay at the China Ranch date farm, our first stay with Harvest Hosts.  Driving past the Kingman range, from Baker to Tecopa, I'm finally starting to feel like the home-based neural patterns are starting to break up and let me finally be really here now, where I am.  Feeling the local terrain calling me, the vastness, the emptiness is surreal.  Following the historic Spanish Trail, we dipped down into a huge valley, the road lowering, our elevation marked by striped outcrop of the rocks in the hills surrounding us. 

We keep going down, lower and lower, and finally down at the bottom it is nothing like flat, we are winding through pillars eroded from wind and flowing water all through  the valley.  We emerge on a table-plain again, and take the turn for China Ranch Date Farm. 

Down a short but steep winding road through the narrows, we lower ourselves into the base of a small valley that has a stream going through it.  The date farm is here at this little flat point in the narrow valley. 

Very funky, lovely place, gift shop and bakery, selling all things dates, plus fabulous crystals and rocks and southwest weavings, baskets, and all kinds of things. We order date milk shakes from the store/cafe (fabulous!  mostly because the vanilla ice cream in them was so good!).  We settle into our spot, and they allow us to use the garden spigot for a tank fill-up (the water was delicious, so crisp clear) and we positioned our van for the night in the parking area.  The wind came up and it got very dusty.  We hiked to the ridge surrounding the farm and watched the sun go down.  Just as the last ray of light was extinguished, the coyotes started howling.  Our hosts had warned us that they had a very active coyote population in the area.  We stayed to listen, holding Porthos on a short leash .  As we turned to head back, two coyotes popped up over the ridge rust in front of us, eyeing our every move.  Porthos, be still, you are with us.  I wasn't too worried, but this was an initial experience, being checked out by coyotes, not knowing how many more were with those two ust over the ridgeline. 

When we got back to the rv, the wind had picked up, so we buttoned down for the evening, staying inside the van, listening to the wind howling outside all night. In the morning, we just got things together and took off, just as the store was opening.  The night before, we bought 2 kinds of dates, plus a mango chutney salsa, plus date syrup. 

Onward to Las Vegas.

We stopped at a National historic marker in the middle of a huge basin.  I took Porthos for a decent stroll, and even with this wide open space with nary a car in sight across the entire basin, yet I still did not want to take him off leash.  The coyotes got me a little spooked about that.  What if Porthos comes across a snake, or a coyote here?  It seems a shame that he has to be tied up the whole time, but we'll see what other options come up along the way.  Being at this stop on the road, I finally realized that my home-based neural habits were finally starting to melt away, and the land of this immense basin wrapped with jagged ridges finally has my full attention.  Finally, I am here now, in the present. Not thinking about what I should be doing, not playing a song in my head, etc., but just being here.  And so the journey begins!  Onward to Las Vegas, over basin and ranges, one after the next.  Nevada really knows how to do ROCKS!  Scenic delights every time we climb a hill in our trusty Lexy.  Beautiful, serene, finally quietude. 

We pull into Las Vegas down from the hills.  Here is this huge city sitting in just one of the random basins that we have been driving through, it could have been any of the other basins, but they chose this particular one.  If you didn't look down at the floor of the basin and just looked at the mountain ridges surrounding the city, you can see how this basin is really just like all the others. It seems a bit random that this huge city was built here in the middle of the desert. But alas, back to city life.

  We make our way to a laundromat and get one load of clothes going, and pick up some greek food for lunch at the other end of the strip-mall.  The lamb and tzatziki were delicious, baba ganoush with tahini.  Hummus and chicken wings weren't as good, but it was a solid 2 meals worth of food! We then stopped in a dispensary, just because it was there.  It seemed there were dispensaries at nearly every strip mall; Navada has much looser regulations I guess! We then headed to our destination, the rv park at Circus Circus.  They had a nice outdoor pool and a doggie play area, it was actually kind of nice!  We'd be parked out on a blacktop, trailers all lined up with electric and water hookups.  Fortunately there weren't too many trailers there, maybe this time of year, maybe covid, don't know, but it was nice not to be overwhelmed with trailers and the temperature was downright pleasant, breezy, not hot.   I set up for my piano teaching, and Phil got a phone call from Rath, so he had to go outside and sit at the nice wrought-iron table provided, so I could teach.  We then had a nice dinner, and I was late getting to choir practice. This plan for checking in every Thursday in a place with electric hookups and wifi is starting to work well.  It takes planning, but we are getting better at it with every trip.

Next morning, Onward! we head to Valley of Fire State Park.  The campgrounds in the park were full, so we max'd out our day use fee and drove all over the park, and then hiked to Mouse'sTank, a walk that led us to a bandit’s hide-away, through lots of petroglyphs.  The sky was blue, the day was beautiful.  We boulder-hopped a little, but came around and met the trail on a steep detour we took.

Porthos loved getting out on the trail, anything to get out of the van!  He is a little bored and anxious, not sure what to do with himself on this trip.  But, he got to greet a few little doggies, so he always gets cheered up by that! 

The landscape was so stunningly gorgeous, every turn the car took gave us a new beautiful view of these red frock formations. 

We drove through the campgrounds, and if next time we plan better, we'll settle in for a few days during the week, because these campground sites were beautiful too.  So, in the afternoon, we headed up to "Poverty Flats", an open area on a bluff, on BLM land.  There are a dozen or so trailers dispersed around this huge area, but we drove out to the point on one buff and are sitting here now, the net day, in utter bliss, a cool breeze at our backs, beautiful hills in n our view, just taking our time, taking in the scenery, ahhh.

 This is how I dreamed RV'ing would be, parked out in wide open space!  We decided that too much time inside the rv made us feel like we were living in a tin can and not enjoying the experience that camping used to bring us, like we were closer to the earth, and in touch with the present, out in the wild.  So, we decided that we'd put our chairs outside the rv and either sit before dinner, or after, just sitting and listening, where ever we were parked, tonight and for all nights going forward.  The evening on the bluff was wonderful; we saw the sun set while sipping apricot brandy, and let ourselves catch up with the day.  Now today, we earned a lay-over day, and we sat out and watched the sun work its way across the basin below (we are on the tail end of a finger of Lake Mead), in utter silence from the environment.  We need a layover day, to do just what I'm doing now, typing away on our journal, reflection where we've been, where we're going, and really just enjoy being, not doing but BEing.  Catch up, this is the vacation experience we needed!  And what a great place to sit and do it!  I feel like I never want to leave, the dog is taking a sunbath nap, we are just sitting in our chairs overlooking the valley, listening the the slight breeze is the only sound presented to us!  Watching the sunset paint the mountain range to the east of us in broad strokes of purple and orange, it was beautiful.