Mojave National Preserve

The first stop on my trip was the Mojave National Preserve. Kim and I arrived in the evening and decided to stay at Mojave's hole in the ground campsite. I started to set up the tent as Kim started to make dinner because we thought it looked like it would rain. After a while I looked down on my sweater and what did I see?? SNOW. We ran into the car to eat and then played scrabble for a while. After a bit the snow turned into rain and we headed into the tent. At a certain point in the night it began to pour and Kim and I began discussing flash floods. We decided to err on the side of caution and hop in the car to sleep.

When we woke up my car was very obviously covered in snow. I hit the windshield wipers and saw that everything was covered in snow!

My car and 3 season tent. Good thing Sierra Designs makes a good product!

Snow covered succulents!

I thought the barrel cactus was especially pretty.

So after the initial shock we started building snowmen and really appreciating this rare site. How many people can say that they have woken up to something like this? It was so beautiful! As the day went on all the snow melted, but we had the picture to prove it happened. The rest of the day sort of had this impending doom sort of look so we decided to go to the Mitchell Caverns! Who doesn't love caves?! So we went through with our awesome tour guide Myke, yes with a Y. We got to hear all about stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, draperies, and shields. For more information on cave formations click here.

The Mitchell Caverns were once owned by Jack Mitchell who set up his own adventure tours. His were a bit more of a scramble than the tour we took, but its neat to see the original path and ideas he had. The caverns have been well preserved and are looking great to me considering how many people must walk through them on a daily basis. It is the same as most ecotourism attractions though, the people coming in take a toll on the surroundings, but what do you do? I am still torn about the subject!

Anywho! On a side note, throughout these entries you're going to see Kim and I in weird glasses, these glasses are 3D. We had this silly idea to do "Kim and Bri's adventures in 3D!" Just to give fair warning!

How ya doin' limestone?

Stalactites!

Comin' to you in 3D

After the caverns, impending cloud doom was still there so we decided to take a drive around Mojave. Mojave is a beautiful place with a diverse landscape; however one thing they don't tell you is to bring a 4WD high clearance car. If you hadn't noticed that is not something I have! We did see a lot and we had lots of bumpy scenic views! We got back just in time to see a pretty rocking sunset!

The next day was beautiful! Kim and I decided to tour the other side of the park and headed to the Kelso Depot Center. I would recommend everyone do this despite it not being near the campgrounds! We found they had a map of hiking trails that were near our campground that the Hole-in-the-Wall visitor's center didn't have!! After our stop there we headed to the Kelso dunes, a 600 foot sand dune in the middle of desert and mountains?! By golly yes!

Me very close to the top! And yes, it was WINDY

And then we jumped off the top and made the sand BOOM!!

And that was our Mojave adventure!! It was onto Grand Canyon!