Day 6 - Thursday, March 24 - Las Vegas, NV to Forest Falls, CA

March 26, 2022

Starting mileage: 79228 Starting time: 10:00 am
Ending mileage: 79510 Ending time: 5:30 pm
Travel mileage: 282 Travel time: 7:30 hours

We took a brief walk out on the strip this morning before leaving around 9 - much quieter than it was last night!

Passing through the NV-CA border near Primm, there is a huge solar-thermal electric generating plant. There are 3 huge towers that hundreds of parabolic mirrors focus the sun on in order to make steam to generate electricity. The light is so intense that there is a bluish haze around the towers.

We decided to take the scenic route through the Mohave National Preserve on the way to Joshua Tree. We were surprised to pass through a large "forest" of Joshua trees here. It was interesting to see the Joshua Trees in bloom. On one side of the road there had been a fire and the landscape was a desolate forest of Joshua Tree skeletons.

Later on, we passed an area where calcium chloride was being mined by digging trenches in the soil where brine was being collected. The ground is so saline that not even the usual desert grasses and sagebrush would grow there - it was absolutely barren.

We were surprised to see a bright whitish patch in front of almost black mountains. This turned out to be the Kelso Dunes, 600' sand dunes just in front of the mountains. This is near Kelso Depot which was an important stop along the railroad in the early 1900s for the steam engines to fill with water and for the train crew to rest. This was abandoned with the transition to diesel trains and was recently turned into a history museum.

We were glad to have had plenty of gas on the way to Joshua Tree as the one lone gas station we passed was selling gas for $7.59/gallon. We were able to get gas for $5.65 in the town of Twentynine Palms, just outside the park entrance. We took the loop through the park that goes past the most interesting rock formations.

We eventually ended up at our friends the Cadys around 5:30 and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant very close to their house - and the only restaurant in the small town of Forest Falls.