Driving The Mojave Road

Took a drive out to the Mojave Road with Tom and his friends, we started at the Colorado River and made it to Kelbaker road where we ran out of time and everyone decided to head home since it was Sunday. I took along my big Pentax 6x7 120 format film camera and my Nexus 7 tablet. The Pentax takes great photos and the Nexus makes a great navigation device, I had downloaded all of the maps onto the device before leaving and used Backcountry Navigator Pro for the navigation app. It all really works great, don't think I'll be going back to my small screen Delorme anymore.

You can find all the info you want to know about the Mojave Road on this website http://www.mojave-road.com

B/W photos taken with the Pentax 6x7 with Ilford SFX 200 film, Red 25A filter and developed with Ilford DD-X

Driving the road thru the joshua tree forest


Somewhere in Lanfair Valley, next to the bus I think


This is on the Fort Piute Trail


This is the Fort Piute Valley / Canyon, you can see the remains of the fort in the lower left. The was running water in the stream.


Camped at Fort Piute


Cool old corral




Lots of petroglyphs along the way










Joshua Tree forest


Old cabin along the way


The Lava Beds near the Lava Tubes, this stuff is really hard to walk on!


Parked somewhere, can't remember but apparently I went for a walk...


Enough black & white, here is some color stuff from the Nexus 7

Sunrise at Fort Piute


Sunset at the Lava Beds


My truck after Tom's friends got hold of it at night


Nice old Native American trail


I stayed an extra night so this was my last night's setup before going home


Trying to catch the sunset reflection of Baker in my rear view window


Red Spotted Toad


More 'glyphs








Tom at the old cabin


Our caravan of vehicles


The frog shrine




Lots more photos of the trip are here on my gallery

Total Mylar Balloons this trip - 1 (not photographed)

Mojave Desert

I have been out of commission for about 5 months now from severe back problems but recently was able to get out for a 3 day trip out to the Mojave Desert with Gary, car camping and easy 1-2 mile day hikes, lots to see. Here are some photos from the trip.

The Turtle Mountains lived up to their name, this was the first Desert Tortoise I have ever seen



The Blythe Intaglios, they are fenced off and kinda hard to get a good picture of from the ground, I am sure Google Earth would shsow them better




Some random petroglyph photos with my S100 digital camera, I used that when I ran out of film




I kinda liked this one, looks like a Christmas tree


These next photos were all taken with my 1937 Zeiss Nettar 515/2 folding camera with Kodak Portra 160 film




Here is Gary coming up out of one of the canyons we visited, I really like the colors on this photo


A few more petroglyph panels





In this photo you can see we are not the only ones visiting these sites, most of the sites we went to are on BLM land and you can find out more info about how to see them by going to the BLM website.


We also stopped briefly to check out the Topock Maze


I also brought along my recently aquired Graphic View II large format view camera



These next few photos were all taken with that camera with Arista EDU ISO 100 B/W film and developed by me at home

Spirit Mountain


Some petroglyphs near our campsite



And of course my star trail photos

This one looks like there is a small light leak in the film holder, notice the white spot coming in from the top


Another one but with some of the hillside in view