Almost forgot, but on the way east from California, I finally stopped at this obscure unit between Mojave National Preserve and Nevada. This is an undeveloped park in all senses of the word. There are no park facilities (besides the small sign), and the center of the park is still a open pit, unprofitable gold mine, which is supposed to be transferred to the park service soon. Not much to see, despite lots of warnings about not running over the Desert Tortoises. From the Castle Mountains on the left, you can look across at the Castle Peaks on the right, but the former don’t look like castles and the latter are outside the park in the New York Mountains. (I blame the miners for the naming confusion).

The “roads” in the park are 4WD high clearance only and sometimes wash out completely. Since I’m trying not to damage my car again (Chaco!), I thought I’d test out my new e-bike on the 10 mile road in from Clara Bow’s old ranch (now a Nature Conservancy reserve). My car would have bumped along well enough until the park entrance, but then it might have gotten tricky. There’s another even rougher way in from the Ivanpah Road. (If you’ve ever driven around here, you’ve seen the Ivanpah Solar Towers which use mirrors to boil salt but burn natural gas each morning to get warmed up. And they kill birds.) Anyways, there was a nice sunset lighting up some of the Joshua Trees, but I didn’t stop to take another photo on my way out.