BLM

Deschutes

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These are Steelhead Falls on the Deschutes Wild & Scenic River near Bend Oregon. The trail is uneven and a bit slippery near the edge in spots, but it’s only about 1/2 a mile from the parking lot to the falls. Tempting to jump off the rock into the water below. There are dramatic bluffs on both sides here, and the river flows 50 miles or so north to the Columbia, where the Lewis & Clark and Oregon trails meet. The upper segment is in the Deschutes National Forest, so it’s managed by the US Forest Service. The Bureau of Land Management runs much of the middle and lower segments, which includes more popular rafting. Steelhead Falls is jointly managed by USFS & BLM, and there are many interesting spots along the whole route. The gorges are gorgeous!

Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument

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The Pacific Crest Trail strolls by Hyatt Lake above, not far from Ashland Oregon, where Northern Californians come up to watch Shakespeare. Honestly the drive up overlooking a deep beautiful valley was far more striking than the pretty lake, but I couldn’t get a decent photograph. The Cascade, Klamath & Siskiyou mountain ranges meet here, and the meadow in the valley is known as Hyatt Prairie. Besides larger animals, the area is well known for bird and butterfly watching, with hundreds of species.

I finally understand the naming conventions of the mountains up here. The Pacific Coast Mountain System includes all the coastal mountains from California up into Alaska. Within that, the Cascades are the young volcanic mountains that run through northern California up to Canada, including Mt Lassen, Mt Shasta, Crater Lake, Mt Rainier, and other stratovolcanoes up to the North Cascades. Within that, the Klamath Mountains are an older range formed by tectonic uplift in northern California and southern Oregon that includes the important Rogue, Smith, Klamath, and Trinity River watersheds, plus the headwaters of the Sacramento River around Shasta Lake. Within that, the Siskiyou Mountains are the stretch that connects the coastal mountains of northern California and Oregon between the Klamath and Rogue Rivers.

This mountainous Bureau of Land Management national monument has fascinating geology, great rivers, and diverse wildlife. The weird mix of soils from ancient seabeds to volcanic debris presents challenges to the plants that have adapted here. Two examples are the cobra lily, a cowled pitcher plant, and the serpentine jewelflower which takes on a purplish tinge here. I recommend reading some of the free Cascade-Siskiyou guides on animals, butterflies, geology and plants before going hiking.

There’s something magical about the smell of the forests up here in Oregon, with the occasional colorful butterfly scooting past, and folks taking their kids fishing while camping by the lake. In town, I tried morel mushrooms and a chocolate porter at the Caldera Brewery, and it was the best meal I’ve had since leaving San Francisco. Folks up here seem to understand the good life.

Trinity

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The Trinity River is misunderstood, although it is one of the largest recreational, scenic & wild river systems in the country. The river is in the middle of the scenic Six Rivers region of northern California, above the Eel, Van Dusen & Mad but below the Klamath & Smith. It was misnamed by someone who mistakenly thought it popped out near Trinidad Head. The river begins in the Trinity Alps Wilderness (above background) which is full of challenging hiking opportunities, and it was dammed to create Trinity Lake (foreground). There are campgrounds for rafting on the Trinity River below the dam, and the farther away from the dam you are, the prettier the river becomes. The Trinity drains into the Klamath, after passing through tribal lands along the Bigfoot Highway (below).

Unfortunately, Trinity Forest was merged with Shasta Forest, leading to an alphabet soup of public lands and government agencies. The US Forest Service manages the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the Trinity Alps Wilderness, and the 14,000+ foot volcanic Mount Shasta. Snowmelt from Mount Shasta flows both north into the Shasta River, another Klamath tributary, and south into Shasta Lake, a dammed section of the Sacramento River. And the USFS runs both Shasta and Trinity Lakes as National Recreation Areas, while the Bureau of Land Management manages the Trinity River where it flows through its lands. The NPS runs the third unit of the joint Shasta-Trinity-Whiskeytown NRA. So, this is a BLM WSR & USFS NRA visit, not to be confused with the NPS NRA. Clear as mud, right?

During the Gold Rush, the area was flooded with miners, and the town of Minersville is now under Trinity Lake. A fascinating stop in the 19th century Joss House in Weaverville, the oldest Taoist temple in California, built when the Dowager Empress was controlling a child Emperor to rule as regent. Well over 1000 Chinese miners lived and worked in the area, although the community was dispersed after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The river has suffered a lot at the hands of men. Besides mining pollution and extensive logging, dams were built and much water was diverted to agriculture. Once plentiful fish and wildlife diminished. Today, our carbon pollution has altered the climate dramatically, with less snowpack, more severe droughts and more wildfires. We need to be better stewards of our public lands to preserve nature for future generations to enjoy.

Fort Ord National Monument

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The military fort near Monterey California closed in 1994, in 2009 part of the dunes became a state park, and in 2012 President Obama made the rest a national monument. The 15k acre site is currently managed by the Bureau of Land Management with just a few bits of unexploded ordinance in one section, but the rest of the large coastal park on rolling hills is open for hiking, biking and horseback riding. It’s a lovely spot where locals walk their dogs and get some exercise in the fresh air. Much of the site is behind gates that block cars from the roads, but there’s parking in neighboring communities like East Garrison from where folks bike in.

Fort Ord was perhaps best known for being an equestrian military base, supporting the 76th field artillery during WWI and early WWII, complete with an equine hospital. Horse soldiers or cavalry, have a long history predating the USA, although with modern drone warfare even heavy armored ‘cavalry’ like tanks must adapt or become obsolete. Here, I was most interested in the Comanche Horse memorial, and the closest trailhead to that is Jerry Smith. Comanche was the last and most famous parade horse on base, and its rider’s grandfather was a horse soldier during the Native American wars. The ‘original’ Comanche was a survivor of Little Big Horn, and the Comanche buried on a hill in Fort Ord is named for that veteran horse’s bravery.

Sand to Snow National Monument

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As the name suggests, this California preserve includes diverse ecosystems from the Colorado and Mojave Deserts to San Gorgonio Mountain. The passes have long been used by Native Americans, and the monument sits just north of the Morongo Reservation. So the area protects both diverse species and cultural heritage.

Jointly managed by the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, this land connects Joshua Tree with the San Bernardino National Forest and helps close the gap with the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto National Monument. While I-10 cuts between the two monuments, it’s not difficult to imagine a wildlife corridor being built over or under I-10 here someday, similar to the new 101 wildlife crossing near Santa Monica. There are existing I-10 underpasses in Arizona and New Mexico with plans for more.

I was curious about the nearby town on I-10 called Whitewater. Turns out the Whitewater River runs through the monument and picks up white silt in the sandy canyon. So, there’s no whitewater rafting on the river, although recent flash flooding closed a couple trails. The headwaters and upper reach is designated a wild & scenic river, then it turns into a recreational river in the wilderness, then flows through the monument and ends up in the Salton Sea.

While the national monument is fairly new, much of the land has been protected by environmental groups who negotiated donations to protect the area forever. The cabin above is a ranger station in a pretty campground in the canyon. It’s nice to know that there are such lovely places just off the interstate.

Carrizo Plain National Monument

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This month I’m posting my spring visits to national monuments and recreation areas in California, slowly working my way north.

Soda Lake above dries out each summer, leaving alkaline deposits that look like baking soda. The plain is best known for occasional super blooms in April attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors. But the roads are poor, so some folks get stuck in the soft mud in this remote area of coastal California ($1,200 bucks to retrieve your vehicle). The Bureau of Land Management runs a seasonal visitor center from December through May, with exhibits and very helpful staff who can tell you if the petroglyph area is open or not. If you plan to see the wildflowers, definitely call ahead to get the latest info on both the blooms and the roads.

I came early this year after a nice dry stretch while the lake was full and the land was still green and drove all over the place without seeing another person. I saw several golden eagles and watched a small flock of curlew land beside me to peck around with their long thin curved beaks. Geology students often come out to drive along the Dragon’s Back and take photos where Wallace Creek is sharply diverted by the San Andreas Fault, which runs between the seasonal lake and the Temblor Range in the photo above left.

Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument

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Palm Canyon is part of Indian Canyons, managed by the Agua Caliente Band of Coahuila Indians near Palm Springs, California. Despite some recent fire damage, the trail is still quite beautiful especially in the morning. Palm Canyon Creek is a Wild and Scenic River further upstream, although the upper trail was closed when I visited. The canyon is definitely worth paying for parking and visiting the fine trading post too, although even in winter, the area is quite hot by midday.

Some years ago, I took my family up on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which has a good view of the north part of this Bureau of Land Management monument. But this trip I enjoyed hiking into the canyon to see the largest oasis grove of shaggy California fan palms. It’s a magical spot with birds zipping between the trees, butterflies and even a coyote seeking water.

Bagdad Cafe

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The 1987 cult classic film Bagdad Cafe was filmed in the California desert on Route 66. If you’ve seen it, you likely remember the lonely song “Calling You”, the quirky characters and the dusty location. I’m going to write about the movie, rather than describe the tens of millions of acres of the National Conservation Lands of the California Desert including the Mojave Trails and many large wilderness areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management, because the movie captures the weird, lonesome feeling of the desert and its ghost towns better than I can.

Carson McCullers wrote a novella called The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which, along with the landscape, inspired a German director, Percy Adlon, to create this movie. He wrote a completely new script and renamed the cafe after a nearby ghost town in order to introduce a bit of magic into the story.

Here’s a hint for folks who may have missed the Aladdin connection. Instead of a magic lamp, a thief from Bagdad steals a gold colored coffee thermos from a German tourist named Jasmin. Trapped in the cafe (after being abandoned by her husband), Jasmin works her magic like a genie on three sad cafe folk: a piano player, an artist and the owner.

The film was a hit in the director’s home country of Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and bus loads of French tourists still frequently stop here to buy souvenirs. The movie was made into a TV show starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, which didn’t do very well, because the adaptation removed both the magic and the whole ‘lonesome desert’ angle, by making the cafe busy and turning the characters into excellent communicators. Miscommunication among misfits is central to the film, as is the sparsely populated desert backdrop.

Sadly, the owner of the Bagdad Cafe just died, and I don’t know how long they’ll stay open, with I-10 no longer following the historic Route 66 past here and with the cafe known for a 40 year old movie. I’ve driven through many of these ghost towns and isolated places headed that way, and I often wonder what kind of dreams—broken or crazy—drove people to try to build lives out here in the middle of nowhere. Still, you never know about places like this; they may last another 40 years. I think the emptiness of the desert gives people a chance to live a different life than the routines and social norms in which most people are stuck. Anyway, watch the film, which conveys more than I can.

Mojave Trails from Amboy to Zzyzx

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Mojave Trails National Monument lies south of Mojave National Preserve and includes a section of 100 year old Route 66 in southern California. But the broader East Mojave Heritage Trails extend through both areas and far beyond, north to the Kingston Range near the Nevada border, east to the Dead Mountains Wilderness near Needles, and south to Sheephole Valley, Old Woman and Turtle Mountains wildernesses. Many of the trails follow the old Spanish trails and Native American routes through passes to water sources. Until this trip, I didn’t realize that California has more desert lands than Arizona, that there were so many huge wilderness conservation lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, or just how diverse the landscapes are. Even without a four wheel drive off road vehicle, you can see Kelso Dunes, Soda Lake, and hike to lava tubes.

The monument has a stretch of ten whistle stop towns named alphabetically starting with Amboy, known for its volcanic crater above. The 250’ high crater can be hiked, but I just wandered around the viewing area nearby. Most of these towns have since returned to dust, but Roy’s Cafe is still open in Amboy, thanks to the son of a chicken chain owner who bought the town decades ago. I enjoy visiting ghost towns and dusty old cafes in the middle of nowhere, and California’s Route 66 has several photogenic spots. I’ll write about my favorite one next time.

If you’ve ever driven I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, you may have wondered about the exit for Zzyzx. Zzyzx was created as a health treatment by a radio conman in the 1940s on the shore of Soda Lake in the Mojave Desert. He developed an oasis resort and sold his salty cure-all by mail nationwide, until he ran into some legal trouble in the 1970s. Now most of the area is within the Mojave National Preserve, and a local college uses the buildings, but it’s still a beautiful spot not to be missed.

What is a national park unit?

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National parks in the national park system

These are our 63 well-known National Parks, including Yellowstone and Yosemite.

National park units in the national park system

While the 63 parks above are the most famous park units in the system, the other 370 national park units are less well known and are less clearly defined.

  • 25 Battlefields & Military Parks
  • 76 specific Historic Sites, including some battlefields and many military forts
  • 64 general Historical Parks, including some more battlefields
  • 31 Memorials for people, places and both positive & tragic events
  • 11 Gardens and undesignated areas, including some more memorials
  • 87 Monuments, including natural areas, some more battlefields and more military forts
  • 76 Preserves, Recreation Areas, Rivers, Shores and Trails, both protecting wildlife and supporting fishing & hunting

President Lincoln first protected Yosemite Valley. Then Grant created the first national park, Yellowstone. Then Teddy Roosevelt created five more, plus various bird reserves, national forests, and monuments, and he signed the Antiquities Act into law. Then Wilson signed the Organic Act which created the National Park Service. Stephen Mather was instrumental in making the parks into what we see today. And since then, there has been a wide variety of additional legislation, creating, ending, renaming, and reorganizing various types of parks for different purposes, including historic sites, rivers, trails and wilderness.

Turns out, a national park unit is quite arbitrary. Either the President or Congress can authorize a national park unit under different legislation, and they can and do change their status too. Leaders regularly reinvent what a park unit is, what it’s for and why it’s important (or not). Presidents on average increase the total by a couple units per year. But it varies; last week the President shrank two national monuments in Utah. All of which makes my trip planning a moving target.

Officially, there are now 433 national park units of the National Park Service (NPS) managed under rules standardized in 1970. I’ve been to 400.

Extra sites not considered park units that are within the national park system

I joined the non-profit National Park Travelers Club (NPTC) to track my visits on their parkstamps.org checklists, and their like-minded community of travelers has been wonderfully helpful. The NPTC got me interested in NPS-related affiliate sites, heritage areas and trails too, and I’ve been to over 100 of these.

  • 32 Affiliates including yet more battlefields, historic sites and memorials
  • 62 Heritage Areas covering broad areas
  • 27 Trails in addition to 6 Scenic Trails that are park units above
  • 50 Wild & Scenic Rivers are also part of the park system
  • 3 Commemorative sites
  • 5 Authorized sites not yet open (typically waiting on private land transfers)
  • 1 co-managed area next to the Grand Canyon

Same type of national park units outside the national park system

Confusingly, there are 1/2 a dozen other federal agencies that also manage exactly the same types of national park units as the NPS, sometimes jointly and sometimes on their own, often under different or even conflicting rules. This leads to confusion on many websites as to exactly how many national monuments and other types of park units there are in the US. And I have to decide whether to include these units or not.

When I began my quest to see our parks, I assumed that NPS management must mean that the site is worth visiting, but one of the first NPS sites I tried to visit is permanently closed to the public with nothing to see or do. Meanwhile, there are non-NPS national monuments over 1 million acres, extraordinarily beautiful, unique in the world, and as important as they are unforgettable.

If a national historic site, monument or recreation area is important enough to be so designated by the President and/or Congress, then it belongs on my EV road trip itinerary, regardless of which government agency manages it. If a President designates a new national monument in the middle of a large national forest, management likely goes to the US Forest Service (USFS), even though it’s not any less important than other national monuments.

So, don’t be surprised to read about a USFS national recreation area or a national monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management. I’ve already posted about several, and I plan to visit more of the following units outside the NPS.

  • 1 Historic Site
  • 51 Monuments
  • 23 Recreation Areas

Where to draw the line on what to see

But I’ve also decided I can’t visit everywhere I’d like to go.

The NPS manages 50 wild & scenic rivers, mostly in or near other NPS units, and I plan to visit the remaining ones. But other agencies manage more than 175 other wild & scenic rivers, which are equally verdant. That’s too many for me, and some are in roadless wildernesses. So my compromise goal is to visit most of our national recreational, scenic and wild river systems that are over 100 miles long. I’ve already seen our shortest wild & scenic river.

There are over 1250 national recreational trails managed by other agencies. While I’ve hiked many, I’m going to stick to the 33 NPS related trails, but feel free to hike the rest.

There are also over 800 national wilderness areas in the US, plus over 500 national wildlife refuges. Many wildlife refuges do not have any roads, since they’re set aside for forests, wetlands and wildlife, not for people. And that is a problem for my electric car and for me.

Our country is full of so many fascinating travel destinations, that there’s simply not enough time to see them all. I’m an old man, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life futilely checking off 2,600+ landmarks, 700+ lighthouses, and ~10,000 state parks. No, I need to draw the line for my own sanity.

I happily drive through national forests and cross scenic rivers every trip, but I usually do so without mention. I’m leaving wilderness areas and wildlife refuges to the plants and animals. I wish I could visit every forest, hike every trail, paddle every wild river, and explore every wilderness and wildlife refuge in the country, because they’re critically important for saving species, especially as so many lands are being damaged irreversibly by the climate crisis. But I can’t, so I will only mention a few of them occasionally in passing. However, these are our public lands, and I hope you care about and help protect them too. Thanks.