Wilderness

Mojave Trails from Amboy to Zzyzx

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

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?

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

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.

Chuckwalla National Monument

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

In Southern California’s Chuckwalla Mountains—named after the chunky chuckwalla lizard—you can pull off I-10 and drive up into a BLM campground in the oasis above. Although there was a fire recently, half of the palms in the oasis are still okay. Honestly, my brief hike was a bit disappointing, with no sign of the lizard. Since it’s obviously hot in the desert, staying at a campground overnight can be a good way to hike early morning when it’s cooler.

Despite all those TV commercials suggesting that you need some big gas-guzzler to drive into the desert, I made it in my electric car. Desert unpaved roads are inconsistent depending on recent weather. But since it’s usually dry, the roads are usually fine. So I ignored the sign saying 4 wheel drive only, and I had no trouble in my low clearance sedan over the 6 mile road, which alternately is sandy, hard, flat, rocky and bumpy. A flash flood could wash out a road, so you do need to watch the weather especially if camping.

In my next post I’ll talk more about different types of national monuments and recreation areas, but this one extends the Joshua Tree ecosystem south and southeast, connecting over 600,000 acres of remote mountainous wilderness between the Sonoran and Mojave deserts.

North Cascades National Park

/ bigdiff / 3 Comments

This photo looks down from the High Bridge at the end of the road 11 miles from Stehekin (rent an e-bike) on Lake Chelan. Here the bridge connects to the Pacific Crest Trail which cuts northeast across the southern wilderness on the last leg to Canada. The northern wilderness section of the multi-park complex is across the Skagit Wild & Scenic River and west of Ross Lake up to the Canadian border.

Both the north and south roadless wilderness areas have many high peaks with receding glaciers, so the hiking isn’t easy. And the wildlife includes black bears, cougars, gray wolves and grizzly bears. Careless campers closed one campsite by leaving food for bears to find, and another was closed due to grizzlies fighting over a nearby carcass. Being long of tooth and short of courage, I just hiked the short Agnes Gorge Trail on the edge of the wilderness to catch some more glimpses of rushing Stehekin River.

Wilderness, of course, has now ended. Now that our carbon pollution is changing the climate globally, there is nowhere on earth unaffected by humans. With that change comes responsibility. Since we no longer allow nature to keep itself in equilibrium, we must act to restore balance. We broke it, so now we own it. The park has increasingly fierce wildfires, which we exacerbated. So the extra damage is our fault, and we must fix it.

Here are my visits to all parks in Washington.

Canyonlands National Park

/ bigdiff / 5 Comments

Although a neighbor to Arches, this park is very different. While the arches are easily approached by car and on foot, exploring the canyon lands requires long river journeys, multi-day backcountry camping, rock-climbing, mountain biking or challenging 4X4 drives. The three main sections, Islands of the Sky, Needles and the Maze aren’t even linked by 4×4 roads or hiking trails. Arches can be thoroughly explored in a single day or enjoyed in a couple hours. Canyonlands in entirety needs weeks, specialized gear, teamwork and planning.

I’ve planned a half dozen different trips here, but so far I’ve only actually managed one superficial visit to peer down into the foreboding, dark deep maroon canyons far below. I took in the views from the Islands of the Sky, observing the Colorado River somewhere down in the photo above, the Green River from another overlook 13 miles down the road, and the Grand View at the southern point looking over miles of canyons across to Needles and the Maze. The popular view point Mesa Arch was crowded with photographers at dawn despite the freezing temperature.

John Wesley Powell explored this last great unexplored area of the US in 1869, traveling down the Green River from Dinosaur through Desolation Canyon to the confluence with the Colorado River and on through Cataract Canyon to Glen and the Grand Canyon. Powell and his crew mapped and named major features in these four national parks, especially Canyonlands, so I recommend visiting his museum in Green River, Utah, watching the film there or reading accounts of his expeditions. Powell was a one armed veteran of Shiloh and a trained geologist who led a group of grizzled veterans and explorers through this land in a few small wooden boats when common wisdom said “impossible”. This is a great park to celebrate Powell and all our adventurous western explorers, including Beckwourth, Fremont, Ashley, Manly, Gunnison, the Spanish and the Native Americans.

Here’s the link to my visits to all parks in Utah.

Theodore Roosevelt Island

/ bigdiff / 5 Comments

“It is true of the Nation, as of the individual,
that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.”

Teddy Roosevelt

On the re-wilded island in the Potomac River amid a couple miles of wildlife trails, there’s a statue of Teddy Roosevelt along with a few granite inscriptions of his thoughts and exhortations on youth, manhood, nature and the state. Nature is slowly reclaiming the plaza’s landscaping, and nobody was there on a drizzly weekday morning. So I felt like I had stumbled across a forgotten sacred space in the forest. Once, a man of great vision, recognizing the importance of wilderness to our spirit and future, fought to protect nature from being wasted by myopic man. He challenged us to overcome our misfortunes, “find delight in the hardy life of the open”, and do our duty to preserve our natural resources for the next generation. Let us not forget him. Let us honor his vision.

“There are no words
that can tell of the hidden spirit of the wilderness,
that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm”

Teddy Roosevelt

Here are my visits to all Teddy Roosevelt parks and to all parks in the District of Columbia.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

/ bigdiff / 7 Comments

I’m obviously not much of a photographer, but I like this one. The tallest dunes here are over 700 feet, but they’re dwarfed by the surrounding mountains. Since I camped at Piñon Flats in the park, I was able to take this just as the sun came over the mountains, which added shadows for contrast. I hiked into the dunes before dawn and along the creek, but it’s not easy to take an interesting picture of so much brown sand, even in such a beautiful, surreal landscape in the moonlight. The dunes and the neighboring preserve are basically all wilderness, easily hiked into, and our footprints quickly disappear.

Whenever I wander into any wilderness, I always wonder about what we value. I have both a BS & MBA in business, and I worked in HQ at a Fortune 100 financial firm for a couple decades. And it seems to me that capitalism is terrible at valuation. One problem is that the first business to claim a resource is often just the first idea that comes along. There may be a better and more profitable use for a resource, but the quickest way to make money is typically the one that’s chosen. Another problem is that business people aren’t very innovative. If they see one business is successful in an area, then they will often just copy that idea. Economically, we’re far better off with a diverse set of competitive products and services than with a small number, because then we’re more resilient to market changes. But short term thinking dominates, which leads to over-investment in a few businesses, rather than a broad, diverse range of businesses.

It doesn’t take any special training to see this. Drive through most towns and see the same chain restaurants everywhere. Look at how similar most vehicles are or how all the fields in an area grow the exact same crop or raise the same cattle. Business is mainly herd behavior, and few want to risk money to develop a completely new business. Capitalists need tax incentives to change. Traditional car companies killed the electric car, then ignored Tesla, and now are demanding that the government build a charging network for them to compete. Who knew America’s largest and oldest corporations were such whiny cowards who need taxpayer handouts before they will adapt?

Why do I think about valuation in the wilderness? Because if the first guy to find this place had owned a cement company, he would have started carting off these dunes to make concrete. And then other concrete material suppliers would have copied him, lowering profits to nearly zero. And the wilderness would have been gone before anyone bothered to think whether there were any other better uses. The same is true of forests, wetlands, prairies, rivers, valleys, mountains and oceans. Capitalism rewards the first, fastest, cheapest exploiter for destroying wilderness, and penalizes long term thinking. Because time is money.

Click here for photos of all parks in Colorado.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

/ bigdiff / 3 Comments
The skinny shrub reaching up in front of the cactus is Ocotillo, just beginning to bloom.

The ranger asked good questions. Given that we live in the Anthropocene or Human epoch, what exactly does wilderness mean to us now? This was one of my favorite ranger talks.

There’s a tiny endemic fish living in a corner of this park near the Mexican border. But because groundwater levels are now dropping sharply, the Quitobaquito pupfish’s natural habitat could disappear within a few years.

Some local school kids helped build a pond behind the visitor center to try to save the pupfish. The park service is re-lining the original Quitobaquito Springs to try to retain more water, but the springs are shrinking. People have been impacting the environment here for over 10,000 years, and, whether we like it or not, the little fish is now dependent on whether we choose to save it.

Ranger Kate asked the campers what we should do. The most common questions were about whether the Mexicans were at fault by siphoning off “our” water. They are actually on a different aquifer south of the Sonoyta River. And that jingoistic attitude really misses the point of being in an International Biosphere, next to the Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. We’re supposed to be sister parks working together to save an internationally important natural area.

One suggestion was to “relocate the fish to a more viable habitat”. But if you take the pupfish out of Quitobaquito, are they still really Quitobaquito pupfish? Zoos don’t really prevent extinction in the wild.

I voted to add water to maintain the habitat. People think nothing of draining a river for a new golf course community and destroying ecosystems by burning fossil fuels. So why not reverse that destructive and short-sighted attitude and take this one chance to spend a few dollars to save a species?

Click to see my photos of all national park units in Arizona.