So my GF and I left work a little early to try and beat traffic around LA to get to the Mojave National Preserve (which we did) as I have a little spot there that I like to camp at because it's very isolated, well when we got there it was taken which was surprising because it's way off the beaten path and I've never seen anyone there before now.....Oh well so we moved on further north into the park looking at other spots I have mapped out and holy crap the place was freakin packed we couldn't find anywhere! And our intention was to only sleep in Mojave and move on because Mojave doesn't interest me much, it's too crowded and just not that spectacular but alas we found a place to camp at the end of a small dirt road that backed up to the ecological study site. As we're sitting around the fire a white tacoma with a flippac comes up the road sees us and turns around no big deal, well about 30 minutes later he comes back and sets up. We woke up in the morning to someone circling around my truck which really startled my gf so I look outside and there is like 6 new trucks parked around our area with kids and dogs just going nuts barking and screaming so we packed up and left. Needless to say I won't be going back to Mojave probably ever again and is another big reason I almost always avoid national parks and preserves.
The action packer makes a perfect little bench seat to eat on the tailgate as well:
My gf also got me this awesome little camp sink/wash station which I got to use for the first time this trip, it has two big sides that hold water (one for soapy water and normal water and a center mesh section to dry dishes):
Exploring around our site before taking off on Saturday morning, and you may notice some of my photos have this weigh darker top or area in the photo and that was not intentional I brought a Sony A7Sii with a metabones lens adapter and it was giving me some really funky results.
After leaving Mojave we headed to Lake Havasu to do a little swimming and scout out a spot I mapped out to camp along the Colorado river and I managed to finally catch a desert iguana, these guys are normally very hard to actually catch by hand:
Now we didn't end up staying at the camp on the river because of wind, there were gusts of over 30mph and it just wasn't gonna be worth it so we headed south to an old favorite of mine. This is a spot that I've been to many times and will go to this exact spot when it's windy because it's in a wash that has high walls that protect you from the wind, we slept great this night! Not to mention there is never anyone around which is another reason I enjoy it so much.
This is my typical dinner cooking set up:
It's also great because the sandy bottom of the wash and high rock walls make for a great place to have a fire even in windy conditions:
We spent all of Sunday looking for snakes and lizards, we came across many different species but I didn't keep my camera on me so I either don't have any photos of them or just crappy cell phone pics (my bad).
Desert Spiny Lizard:
Baby Western Diamondback Rattlesnake:
Huge male Chuckwalla:
Desert Iguana:
Lots of flowers and cacti blooming so we spent the morning checking out all of that:
The action packer makes a perfect little bench seat to eat on the tailgate as well:
My gf also got me this awesome little camp sink/wash station which I got to use for the first time this trip, it has two big sides that hold water (one for soapy water and normal water and a center mesh section to dry dishes):
Exploring around our site before taking off on Saturday morning, and you may notice some of my photos have this weigh darker top or area in the photo and that was not intentional I brought a Sony A7Sii with a metabones lens adapter and it was giving me some really funky results.
After leaving Mojave we headed to Lake Havasu to do a little swimming and scout out a spot I mapped out to camp along the Colorado river and I managed to finally catch a desert iguana, these guys are normally very hard to actually catch by hand:
Now we didn't end up staying at the camp on the river because of wind, there were gusts of over 30mph and it just wasn't gonna be worth it so we headed south to an old favorite of mine. This is a spot that I've been to many times and will go to this exact spot when it's windy because it's in a wash that has high walls that protect you from the wind, we slept great this night! Not to mention there is never anyone around which is another reason I enjoy it so much.
This is my typical dinner cooking set up:
It's also great because the sandy bottom of the wash and high rock walls make for a great place to have a fire even in windy conditions:
We spent all of Sunday looking for snakes and lizards, we came across many different species but I didn't keep my camera on me so I either don't have any photos of them or just crappy cell phone pics (my bad).
Desert Spiny Lizard:
Baby Western Diamondback Rattlesnake:
Huge male Chuckwalla:
Desert Iguana:
Lots of flowers and cacti blooming so we spent the morning checking out all of that:
