High Desert Weekend Trip-log #10
Hagen Canyon, CA - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 12pm

For years I have used the tag In Beauty I Walk to mark posts about hiking in the great outdoors. My inspiration is a Navajo prayer, In Beauty I Walk. That phrase is both the title and the refrain. In that prayer walk refers not just to the literal act of walking but to the ( Read more... )

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #9
Hagen Canyon, CA - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 12pmRed Rock Canyon State Park, like I said in my previous blog, is not big. And the Hagen Canyon Nature Trail we're hiking is not big. The official length is only about 1.5 miles. But distances in the desert have a way of being bigger than they seem on a map. One, you can go off ( Read more... )

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #8
Hagen Canyon, CA - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 10am

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #7
Palmdale, CA - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 8amYears ago Hawk and I coined the term "motel camping". It has been an in-joke between us. "Are you think we'll go camping on this weekend trip?" one of us, usually Hawk, would ask the other. "I'm think 'motel camping'," the other, often I, would reply ( Read more... )

On Saturday we visited the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in California's Antelope Valley. It's part of the high desert nestled in a valley in the Tehachapi Mountains (aka above The Grapevine). And there are lots of California Poppies there. Wow, this paragraph is so repetitive. It's like the park's name tells you everything about it ( Read more... )

Outside Barstow, CA - Tue, 15 Sep 2020, 12pm

Today's the last day of our 11-day trip through Utah and Arizona. We're partway home; we still have 375 miles to go. But we're not done with this trip, or at least not done having fun on it yet! We went on another hike today, this one in the Mojave Desert of California ( Read more... )

Barstow, CA - Mon, 14 Sep 2020, 10pm

This evening we're staying in Barstow, California. While it's hard to imagine small, dusty, scruffy, run-down Barstow as being anything more than a place to stop along the route from A to B (it's major crossroads town and a halfway point for Angelenos heading to/from Vegas) we actually have a purpose to staying ( Read more... )

Bryce, UT - Saturday, 5 Sep 2020, 11pm

Today has been a long day. We've driven a total of 537 miles from Bakersfield, CA to Bryce, UT. Along the way we made several stops, including one to hike at higher than 10,000' (3km) elevation!
Buh-Bye, Bakersfield
Our day started in Bakersfield, where we arrived last night at midnight. Even as I settled down ( Read more... )