Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

where was that?!!?!

 

Says Baja...I'm not familiar because I've not been down there so can't give you a better idea of location. I'm sure Crom will provide more info.

 

Just reading a bit about earthquakes in the last page and came across this...

https://www.pe.com/2019/07/09/autho...-possibly-related-to-july-4th-earthquake/amp/

RIP fellow.

It has crossed my mind maybe once or twice when I crawl under the truck

 

Ouch... That does seem like very bad luck.

I'm extremely leery of getting under a vehicle without pretty robust support. The various stack ups of 4x4s or tipsy Hi-Lifts that I see people supporting trucks with gives me the willies. Sure, if you are just changing a tire you aren't risking much. But getting under something? That's a whole different story. Hence the really large crossed bars bases I have for my jacks and the various caps for the ram that prevent an axle or frame member from slipping off.

Damn - poor guy.

 

I saw that report too and felt bad for the guy. I too am extra cautious about spending any time under the chassis and use triple supports at home. I've also wrenched on sloped driveways for a long time, and have had a lot of interesting experiences. Can't be too careful!

 

La Rumorosa, Tecate, MX. The mountains were vibrating and that was the dust the rose up.

 

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Not all those who wander are lost...

Visit random parts of the high desert in mid-July? What could be more pleasant?

Well... actually the heat index should be about 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday here in MD as I sat melting by the side of a pool at my daughter's birthday party. Humidity sucks nuts.

I tried to give up on summer trips this year but I can't stay away. Because I'm only slightly crazy (as opposed to completely crazy as I'm often accused of) I'll actually be staying nights in hotels and exploring by day. Or hopefully mostly by morning so I'm out of the worst of the heat though it sounds like there might be a chance for some afternoon thunderstorms to chase.

There's a large swath of desert north of I-15 and CA-58 that I never really get into that I'm hoping to spend a few days exploring - mostly by vehicle as it will be too dang hot to hike.

Wheels up tomorrow morning! Assuming my flight doesn't get canceled.

 

..i sympathize with your current geographic location. i spent 23.5 months on mount royal terrace, near druid hill. i was up in the 8500-9500 ft levels last week and it was about 80*F in the shade, but much hotter in direct sun. even at 11000 ft it was comfortably warm. enjoy your trip into the drier climate!

 

Gonna be a long wait for your next report. Safe travels.

 

My FIL now can't wait to return to his new home out here. They just finished prepping and closing the sale of their Lutherville house. They will now only return to live and sail on their boat at their discretion. Grilling on his new deck in March was a revelation that had him grinning ear to ear. He officially comprehends "it's a dry heat" now. Of course, I m having to school him on irrigation now.

 

Stormy Weather Ahead
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Well my trip to nowhere in particular is turning up nicer photos than I expected! One more day to go.

 

You made a negative! Bravo! #golfclap

 

There's no heart button so I can only "like" this so much. Amazing job.

 

High Desert - Day 1
July 2019

I hadn't planned on doing a summer trip this year. Past years trips have been so-so either dealing with smoke, heat, bugs or altitude issues sometimes combined with very long drives to and from. By late June though I needed a break and decided to try something different. Skip trying to find nice temps and just deal with the desert summer by spending the night in hotels instead of camping. Do most of the exploring by vehicle and don't plan any hiking due to the heat. I realized there were a lot of spread out semi-interesting things I've been meaning to see but that I never wanted to "waste time" doing during my trips in the more pleasant seasons.

As usual the trip started at 4AM in Baltimore, fly to Vegas arriving by 9AM, pick up the truck, provisioning, grab In and Out then head out of town. The only real goal for the day was to get to Barstow via the scenic route.

A quick drive south brought me to the California border at Primm, NV. There is a power line access road just north of Primm and you can get to it on a BLM road that leaves from the Flying J parking lot. This power line access road runs for the most part behind hills and mountains north of I-15 nearly all the way to Barstow before meeting the I-15 again. The plan was to take it until I got sick of driving it at which point I could cut back down to the I-15 at a variety of places. There weren't many specific "sights" along the way. I just hoped to see a lot of desert vistas I've never seen before.

The first section of road passes to the north of the Ivanpah solar towers. It was an unusually cloudy day for the summer and so the towers were not operating. The road continues to the north of Clark mountain. The road was in decent shape but because of the terrain it was rather rocky and bumpy making it difficult to average more than 20 mph. In general this section wasn't that interesting and taking a route a bit to the south and visiting the Colosseum mine might be more entertaining.

After a bit less than an hour I descended into Shadow Valley and crossed the paved Excelsior Mine Road that runs north. The climb to the west out of the valley was a long, straight road following the equally straight power lines.

Because it's there...
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This following the power line road plan was feeling a bit like a pointless endeavor. Fortunately this next section was well graded and a sustained 40 mph was easy. Every time I stopped to get out of the vehicle I was greeted by an incessant 60 Hz buzzing from all the power lines. Note to self - don't ever plan to camp along a power line access road.

There were many showers and storms sweeping around the desert and near the summit I was finally treated to a photo worthy vista to the north. As a side note most of the photos from this trip were taken with an IR modified camera so as to be better able to cut through the typical summer haze in the desert. Chlorophyll is very bright in this IR band so that's why the Joshua trees here look like they are all holding snow cones. Also because the camera lenses are not designed for these wavelengths there is a lot of post processing to recover contrast in the scene. So expect things to look pretty heavily processed...

Joshuas standing watch
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From here there were occasional rolling sections that were a bit slower as the road passed to the north of Turquoise mountain. Access to the Turquoise area is available more directly from I-15 so there is little reason to be on the backside route here other than curiosity. Eventually the road descends to and crosses CA-127 north of Baker. Here some sections of the road were in excellent condition but fairly soon became rather rocky or else severely washboarded. Not that high frequency/modest amplitude washboard that aired down tires and a good suspension will eat up. No - lower frequency very high amplitude stuff that sucks nuts. Speeds again slowed to about 20 mph on average. The road here now follows the southeastern corner of Ft. Irwin providing views into terrain rarely seen. This section was rather picturesque though four huge power lines and a large gas pipeline scar do detract a bit. At least all this infrastructure follows a single right of way. The cloud cover was now a bit more broken and provided wonderful patterns of light and shadow across the desert.

Still going...
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I was starting to get a bit tired of the long jarring drive but took frequent breaks to explore the restricted land to the north with binoculars. It seems unlikely I'll ever feel the need to drive through here again so best make the most of it while here!

On the southern edge Ft. Irwin is a mock village that was used frequently for training in the past decade. There are actually multiple villages on the base and during training can be staffed by a large contingent of mock villagers. An Atlantic article from 2013 is a good write up.

Not quite a Potemkin village
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By this time I was getting a bit fatigued with over 60 miles of dirt road travel. I had already planned to visit a grave site just a bit south of the power lines and this also looked like a good exit road which would drop me back to the I-15 at Afton Canyon. Much of the rest of the power line road would cross the same rather flat plain as the I-15 between here and Yermo. There were a few sites north of the road I had thought to examine but they could of course be saved for another day. The weather was also beginning to take a turn for the worse to the south and so finding pavement seemed like a good idea.

The grave site itself seems quite arbitrary in location. The inscription seems to reflect this as well. The original inscription appears to have disappeared but the Mojave River Museum put up a more durable version of it in steel around 1997.

Bonnie Keebler Harris
1823 - 1872
Mother of 5 died of sickness
This is as far as we could get her
​

A rather bleak contrast to the air conditioned comfort in which I made my journey over the past few hours. With the storm building to the south it was time to go though. So I climbed back in the truck and turned the key. And NOTHING. Not a click, not a dash light. Absolutely nothing. Uh oh.

Of course this really wasn't that big a deal even if the truck proved to be totally dead. I had plenty of water and two different satellite communication choices if I needed help. Nonetheless a bit disconcerting.

The battery was less than a year old. I had successfully restarted the truck multiple times during the trip already. One odd thing had been the radio had been periodically rebooting during the day. There had been no indicators on the dash though. So it seemed like the alternator must have been fine. Did some sort of internal fault appear suddenly? Very weird.

As a first try to get moving before a storm hit I broke out the lithium jump pack I always carry with me. I expected to need to push a few extra buttons on this because when a battery is totally dead some safety features kick in. Instead it seemed perfectly happy to be connected and the truck turned over right away. As is typical with the Tacoma it stalls nearly immediately when started from a dead state as the ECU isn't quite happy. Second try and all was fine. Disconnected the jump pack and decided to leave truck on until I got to the parking lot of a parts store in Barstow in case a new battery was needed.

Happy to be mobile again I headed south - which also happened to be directly headed for the building storm. This minor road to the south was actually in much better condition than the power line road and I was able to make good time. Eventually the road lined up nicely with the storm and a quick picture was in order.

Storm Clouds Ahead
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As I reached the Afton Rd. exit on the I-15 there were some small drops of rain falling but the storm was staying south of the freeway at this point. I had only aired down to 25 psi and with the storm in the area and the electrical system of the truck in question I decided to drive to Barstow at this pressure. I was on the I-15 for just a few miles until I could exit at Harvard Rd. and then take things slower on frontage roads. The drive was uneventful.

During the drive I also realized what was the most likely explanation for the electrical problem but the safest thing to do was to get to Barstow before experimenting. I finally pulled into the Auto Zone parking lot, stopped the engine, popped the hood and quickly discovered my hypothesis was correct. The ground cable clip to the battery was loose. The jump pack itself hadn't been necessary at all. Just applying the clamp from the jump cable had squeezed the ground clip back onto the terminal and the truck started from its own battery! The truck was stored with the battery disconnected and the storage folks had probably not gotten it tightened properly. All that awful washboard had finally gotten it loose enough to not connect.

Happy there were no real problems I found my hotel, took a shower and fell asleep before 7PM as it had been a long day. I covered about 80 miles of dirt road I'd never been on before and likely will never do again. All in all it was a pretty good day and a bit more entertaining than just driving down the I-15. That said I must say as far as scenery goes the I-15 does in fact follow a very scenic routing. I might say it is actually superior to the alternate route I took.

 

Did you enjoy the monsoon storm? Did it get your hotel? The clouds to the east of San Diego were quite amazing. We were getting flash flood warnings frequently that week and a lightning bolt did cause a fire. Love the storms. .

 

That was crazy! We were at the Kern River July 5th. Not far from there having dinner when OMG we were rocking! Lots of significant aftershocks too. No damage where we were but heard the west end of 178 had a rock slide and was cut off for a day. The river is flowing good so the rafting was epic. Fun times.

 

On the first day I didn't end up in the middle of any of the storms though got some sprinkles on the edges of them. There did end up being some rain in Barstow but at least when I was awake no big storms came directly through. There were plenty of big cells around. Most concerning some of them just weren't moving much meaning they were dumping a lot of rain on one spot.

Now on the third day I did encounter a storm, but that's a story for a later post...

 

Amazing thread! Noticed early on you had been looking at trash receptacles so I did a thread search and found no mention of the Trasharoo which might serve to keep smellier items outside.

 

High Desert - Day 2
July 2019

To avoid the heat I kept my schedule on east coast time. I woke up a bit before 4AM and got to a surprisingly great donut shop - Frosty's - as they opened at 4:30. For whatever reason it seems most of the entire east coast is incapable of actually making a donut. I call Dunkin's weak attempts "sugar bagels" and while there are some small donut shops in the east in general they don't do much better than that or sad grocery store bakery donuts. Anywho picked up three actual donuts which looked promising and headed north of Barstow into the desert.

I had selected a potential sunrise photo spot on Google Earth before the trip and drove to the top of hill with time to spare. Unfortunately while the sky looked promising overhead there were deep and high clouds to the east which I was fairly certain would block all potential for pink twilight. Indeed sunrise was mostly a fizzle but it was still a wonderfully pleasant morning on the peak in cool temperatures with a breeze. I did get one so-so sunrise shot of the endless layers of ranges extending into the distance.

Layers upon layers
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As the sun finally got above the cloud deck to the east I ate my tasty donuts and watched the light play across the landscape. There was a lot of terrain to explore out there which was the goal for the day. After a leisurely breakfast I drove back down the hill (tall enough to be considered a mountain out in the east) and across the Joshua tree dotted landscape.

Lots to explore
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Much of this trip was about linking together minor excuses of locations to visit just to take in the desert and some of its history. The first stop for the morning was the crash site of the XB-70 Valkyrie. Large swaths of the Mojave are military reservations and of course much of the country's aviation history - and its tragedies - have happened in the skies above the desert.

You can read all about the aircraft, its obsolescence before it was even built, presidential politics keeping it around for a bit and the risky and unnecessary PR shoot that led to its demise and the death of two pilots in the link above. The TL;DR is that it was conceived when it was believed a high and fast bomber would penetrate Soviet air defenses. Technology was changing rapidly though and before it was even built high and fast offered no safety at all anymore. Flying close to the ground would be the new strategy and the XB-70 had no advantage over the B-52 in that department. Kennedy played Eisenhower as "weak on defense" and used the cancellation of the XB-70 as an example. When Kennedy got into office and learned indeed the program was pointless he cancelled it but two prototypes lived on for aviation experiments. A photo shoot for General Electric resulted in a mid-air collision with one of the prototypes.

The XB-70 and the F-104 that collided with it both crashed north of Barstow. The XB-70 pilot managed to escape using an ejection pod. The co-pilot who likely initiated his ejection sequence only moments later never left the aircraft as the G-forces became so high so rapidly that the mechanism that would move his seat back into an escape pod couldn't function. Today there is a small memorial to Major Carl Cross at the location where the XB-70 impacted the terrain. This morning the moon put in an apropos appearance relative to the memorial.

Memorial for Major Carl Cross
XB-70 Co-pilot
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There is another memorial for the F-104 pilot who was killed instantly in the mid-air a few miles away but I didn't navigate the nest of open and closed BLM routes to get to it. Nearby the XB-70 site is an FAA radar site on top of a rise which provides a nice view of the area.

Next I headed due north on a good dirt road taking in the views. Eventually this road ran into the newly expanded southern border of Ft. Irwin. A road paralleling the fence took me around to the northwest. Eventually I reached the southern edge of China Lake's south ranges. Nothing appeared active this morning but a wide variety of F-4 hulks and containers used as targets litter the range.

My main interest though was in Superior Dry Lake. One of the lake beds is still accessible on BLM lands despite the base expansions. A few BLM routes drive directly across the lake bed. While I had found evidence of the previous day's thunderstorms in large puddles on some the roads on the way up it appeared that the lake bed wasn't impacted and was bone dry and hard. I was able to drive directly across on one of the BLM routes but honestly it took the GPS to keep me on track as there is no sign of the route. About midway across I stopped for a morning snack. It was already getting pretty warm now past 10AM. With the truck oriented into the sun and using a pressurized mister bottle I was very comfortable sitting on the tailgate in the shade eating my last donut and taking in the views.

Superior Dry Lake​

I must say the morning's activities of not really going anywhere sure did take a lot of time! It was already five hours since I had left the hotel. I had stopped frequently and poked at lots of things. Took lots of photos (most not very interesting) and spent lots of time exploring with binoculars. It was really quite relaxing to not have anywhere in particular to be or any reason to hurry.

I continued southwest through Superior Valley headed towards the Black Mountains. Eventually I reached the aptly named Inscription Canyon. The canyon is quite short fortunately as it was getting hot by now and I was glad to have my trusty silver coated sun umbrella with me.

Inscription Canyon
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Continuing around the Black Mountains the road was quite scenic and I stopped at Scout's Cove which is an odd little old mining site with a single room refuge cut into a mound on the site. Continuing along the canyon road eventually opened up with a view to the south of a rather massive flat expanse including Harper Dry Lake. Further south the road crossed a long east-west road that would carry me to the 395 after about 18 miles.

Headed West
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I had originally thought I might head north up to the Cuddeback Lake area from somewhere along this road but I was already going to be putting in about 80 miles of dirt road travel for the day and it was getting towards noon. So instead I decided to hit just one more stop along this road before hitting the pavement and driving back to Barstow.

The B-1 Lancer program was in many ways a repeat of the XB-70. It was obsolete before it was even built. Designed to fly low it was not only going to avoid SAM sites but flying close to the ground would blind most air based radars because the aircraft return gets lost in the huge return from the ground itself. Of course everyone knew of this problem and new designs of air radars (so called look-down-shoot-down radars) were already underway. The Soviets fielded such radars before the B-1 could fly. At the same time cruise missiles were being developed and a B-52 could launch gobs of these from well outside Soviet air defenses. This was vastly more cost effective and mission effective than flying a whole dang airplane into Soviet territory. We also all now know the F-117 which could actually penetrate Soviet air defenses was being developed at the same time but this wasn't public knowledge at the the time.

In another case of history rhyming Reagan attacked the Carter administration as "weak on defense" for cancelling the pointless B-1 program. Another sign in politics that any side can use the same tactics and arguments as the other with a straight face. The difference this time is that upon entering office and learning the B-1 was a waste of money and of the existence of the F-117 the Reagan administration went ahead and built the dang thing anyway. The B-1 pretty much did nothing for a good long while - even sitting out Desert Storm while the B-52s and F-117s did their thing. Eventually it became mission indistinguishable from the B-52 just sitting in a holding pattern full of JDAMs waiting for someone on the ground to Link 16 them some coordinates to provide "close air support" from 40,000 ft. Ironically the B-1 is expected to be retired in 2036 while the B-52 it supposedly was going to replace will operate into the 2050s. The B-1 is nonetheless a pretty cool aircraft to watch fly at an airshow and having been buzzed by them a handful of times in the open desert has been fun.

The B-1A was developed under the Carter administration and canceled. The B-1B was started under Reagan. Flights of the B-1A prototypes were used during the B-1B development to test subsystems. In August of 1984 one of the prototypes crashed during low altitude flight as a result of pilot error. The variable geometry wings were swept forward without moving fuel between tanks to properly change the aircraft's CG. As is typical this wasn't a simple error but the result of various systems being in non-standard configurations for the test flight. The crew did manage to eject their escape capsule but it landed hard killing test pilot Doug Benefield. There is a small memorial at the site.

B-1A Crash Memorial
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At this site there were still small bits of aircraft left around including a burned circuit board showing typical electronics construction techniques of the 1970s. If you visit any of these sites please show respect. Test pilots have incredibly challenging jobs and take on significant risks in the hopes of better protecting our nation. Yes there is a lot of politics and waste in military programs and the eye of hindsight can also be quite cynical. For these pilots though they had a job to do - a dangerous one - and they did it to their best ability when asked regardless of what the "higher ups" motivations might have been for a particular program or flight.

A few miles further along and I came to the 395. I aired back up as there was going to be a fair bit of highway driving back to Barstow. I stopped for lunch at Astro Burger in Kramer Junction based on @Crom's recommendation in his build thread. I think I had last eaten there myself in 1992! There is construction on the 395 related to the CA-58 expansion and it has nearly cut off the Astro Burger parking lot. Sounds like it has been a very hard few months for them with business way, way down due to the difficult access. In a couple of months their parking lot should be easily accessible again.

After a tasty burger and fries it was time to head back to Barstow. I had spent a good eight hours exploring and drove around 80 miles on dirt roads for the day. With the afternoon heat on I retreated to an air conditioned afternoon nap in the hotel looking forward to my last day of exploring.