Pining for the Fjords

On Part 4 of the Joshua Tree National Park blogs, we did a bit more hiking, this time to an old gold mine. Dawn breaking on a Tuesday morning We woke up early again the next morning, and as I peeked through the shades on my side of the camper, I noticed that not only were there clouds out there, but we also had a visitor in camp! We heard coyotes the night before and  this morning,  so we figured this dude was staying away from them. Like most mornings in the camper, we hung out in bed until the need to use the loo drove us out into the cold, and since we were now up, we started making hot water for coffee and tea.  Breakfast was biscuits and sausage gravy, made at home for Chris' birthday a few days earlier; I heated up the gravy in the saucepan on the two-burner stovetop we have inside the camper, and Chris toasted the biscuits outside on the Camp Chef.  While breakfast was reheating, we moved around camp, slowly organizing things and packing up for the trip home. After doing di

In Part 3 , we fended off wild chipmunks while we ate lunch. Welcome to my blog. Here's a shot of a yucca. After leaving Quail Springs, we drove down Keys View Road (a small road inside the park) and made it to the Lost Horse Mine trailhead.  The sign at the dirt road offshoot to the trailhead said parking was full, and when we made it there, there was a vehicle in every spot.  However, luck was on our side, and right as Chris started to maneuver the truck into a place where we could could turn around, a car pulled out!  We had a space!  We geared up and started out. Here's a detailed history of the mine, but in short, in the late 1800s, a family of ranchers lost their horses and while they were out looking for them, they stumbled across a claim they felt would be a good spot for a gold mine.  They were right, and it operated until 1905, when the vein was lost after a fault line was exposed.  When Joshua Tree became a national monument in 1936, the Park Service took over owner