Jawbone Canyon BLM OHV Area

We are still in Pahrump, Nevada enjoying some time with friends and making new ones while we wait for our appointment on Monday to get the trailer fixed. We now have plans to stay here until at least Wednesday 4/12. That will only give us less than a month to get all the way to Texas for a wedding. We may have to move a bit quicker than our normal pace.

We left Horse Creek COE park on March 25. We rarely move on a Saturday, but we had a good travel day and we were going into a BLM area that was all dispersed camping. We were confident we could find a spot. We drove south through the fruit tree groves in the direction of Bakersfield. I stopped at a small fruit stand along the road and bought some lemons, avacados and pecans. The prices were great. Small Avacados were 6 for a dollar. I think I spent all of $9.

We hit Highway 58 in Bakersfield and then started to climb up into the mountains. It was a long constant climb. The truck did fine and we finally leveled off and started to go down the other side. It has been a while since we made that type of a climb. When we got to the town of Mojave, we turned back north and went the 18 miles to the Jawbone canyon road. They have a nice visitor center and the guy gave me the run down on the area. Cost to camp $0, no water, a few pit toilets and you can ride the trails and roads that are designated on the map. They have a paved road that took us all the way to the campsite we chose. There was no problem finding a place all by ourselves. My kind of place.

The forecast called for a major wind event on Monday, so we stayed hooked up and positioned us nose into the wind and lowered the jacks.

I unloaded the bike and went for a ride to check the place out. There were trails going everywhere. There were some huge hill climbs.

I do not have the right bike to try one of those, so I just stuck to the trails. I did ride up to the rim of the canyon and enjoyed the views.

There are some very nice places to camp all over place. I can see why some people come from a long way off to ride and camp here.

This is a very large area that allows riding. I took a ride along the trail/road behind our trailer. I was hoping to be able to find my way home. I found a place up on the top of a ridge with a beautiful bloom going on.

Then it was back to the dry dessert and a fun road.

It was a fun day of riding I ended up putting in about 70 miles. I came upon a guy that had broken a tie rod on the front end of his off road truck. He needed a tool that I had. I rode the 10 miles back to the trailer and took it back to him. He really appreciated it, and offered to pay me. I told him it was just a karma thing and to pay it forward to someone else. Off road people are good people. I had fun riding the 10 miles of road at a good pace anyway.

The wind came as expected on Monday. We saw reports of gusts of 65 mph. We have never been rocked that hard. We rode it out fine and just enjoyed our solitude.

We did a bunch of reading. I read in another blog about some things to see in this area. I will write all about those excursions and a surprise visitor in my next entry.