Tripometer – 9782 mi
Gas Gauge – 753.971 gal
Location – Black Rock Canyon Campground, Yucca Valley, CA
Lodging – $30
Cans of OFF – 4
Thousand Trails is an RV Club that sells memberships allowing members to spend as many nights as they wish at Thousand Trails campgrounds for one ‘low annual fee’ (~$500). Aside from the very high rate of $55 / night we had more than a few complaints about this campground. What we found is that the front of the campground, including the front office, sales office, and several of the up front camping areas were in immaculate condition. When we checked in we were directed to one of the back camping lots which were in deplorable condition. We had to search for a site with working electricity as many of the electric posts were somewhere on the scale from simply not working to completely gutted of copper to support somebody’s meth habit. The camp sites themselves were dirty with debris from several prior campers and the bathrooms were the bare minimum. Leaving the Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails RV Park this afternoon was not a hard thing to do.
The news for the past few days in the area has been focused on the impending arrival of Hurricane Rosa. This category 3 storm has slowly weakened over the past week to a tropical storm; however, we are keenly aware of what effect a storm of this size can have on the desert. We had planned to stay on BLM land across the highway from Joshua Tree National Park this evening, but the idea of putting our camper in a dry lake bed just before the remnants of a hurricane hits the area seems like less than a bright idea. As we drove towards Joshua Tree we could see the dark gray clouds crowding the horizon over the mountains in the distance. To be honest, we’re both relishing the idea of seeing a full blown storm in the desert, something we imagine most of the locals have only seen a few times.
At one point during this drive we did pass through a few rain bands assumedly from the remnants of the hurricane. What we found very interesting was the smell. The desert doesn’t have a strong odor… everything is dry… until it rains. Opening the car windows after we passed through a rain band yielded a very strong musty odor, not unlike what you smell when dusting furniture with a wet cloth – literally like wet dust.
Stratis joined us shortly after we arrived at Joshua Tree near dark. We all enjoyed steaks on the BBQ with all the fixins and drank in the sight of the moon and stars above the Joshua tree covered hills surrounding our campsite. Hurricane Rosa apparently decided that she would take a more southern path and leave us dry this evening.
We are very concerned about scorpions around Ranger. We have read several articles over the past week warning about letting dogs sleep on the ground in areas that have scorpions. Apparently scorpions will seek out warmth once the sun goes down and sleeping dogs provide the exact environment that scorpions desire. Ranger is in for several weeks of seclusion in the camper during the evenings. He’s not happy with this development at all and we are feeling quite guilty about the whole thing.