Sunday in the Mojave
Today Steven and I set out from Lancaster and drove north on California 14 to the town of Mojave. From Mojave, we took the 20 Mule Team Road northeastward to US 395 and then north to the mining areas of Red Mountain, Johannesburg, and Randsburg.
Just north of Lancaster (at the Fairgrounds exit), we noticed one hillside positively covered with golden orange flowers. I’m assuming that these were the famous California Poppies. Being from Texas, I’m used to seeing the hills and pastures full of bluebonnets, so the orange color surprised me. We didn’t stop to take pictures of that one hillside, but did snap a few of the distant mountains with cascades of orange along the sides.
We arrived in Mojave around 11:30, just in time to get lunch at Mike’s Roadhouse Cafe. The food was plentiful, inexpensive, and excellent. Our only complaint was that we didn’t have a cooler to take the left-overs with us.
20 Mule Team Road was quite an adventure. The first 10 miles or so out of Mojave was a very good road. Then we came to an intersection where a road turned off to the left and 20 Mule Team Road wen on straight ahead, though with a sign stating "This road is not maintained". The road looked fine and had a posted speed limit of 55 miles per hour, so we figured tha ti wouldn’t be any trouble. And besides, there was a car right in front of us. So we stayed on 20 Mule Team Road. After a couple of miles, the road began to deteriorate. There were potholes large and small. And some flooded areas. Steven was getting really frustrated when the pavement ended and we were on a hard-packed dirt road. Except for the washboarding (which slowed us down to 20 mph or so) it was not much worse than the earlier paved portion. He was just about to give up and turn back when I suddenly saw trucks passing a cross-road in front of us. At last we were coming up to Highway 395.
Randsburg was a charming little mining town full of antique shops and other points of interest to the tourist. There were a lot of guys (and gals) on motorcycles parked at one of the small stores on the main street. We drove around for a bit, then doubled back and parked at the Randsburg History Museum. Unfortunately, it was closed; the lady who keeps it open was ill and could not come in today. We walked through the museum’s backyard looking at bunches of mining equipment which had just been tossed back there with no organizaiton or description. I don’t know of a docent is available to describe it when the museum is open or not. There wasn’t a lot to take pictures of, so I didn’t.
After kicking around Randsburg for a short while, we got back onto the highway (US 395 to CA 58 to CA 14) back to Los Angeles. I have a meeting with a customer in LA tomorrow morning and we’re going to settle into a hotel fairly early and call it a day.
