I left the car at Hagen Canyon, just off the road to the campground, just off hwy 14.
Looks cool. But I'm going the other direction. I went South to (eventually) Munsey Rd, and turned East. This is paved. I passed the Honda proving grounds, but it's tightly fenced, so I have no info about their next big thing. Munsey Rd passes South of Koehn dry lake, and turns to dirt. The lake is very dry
Eventually I found the start of route R5, and went South, into the Rand Mountains
This runs along the Mojave Desert Tortoise sanctuary, so periodically road signs ask you to watch your speed.
This road is built in a drainage, and it is a climb, so even my burly 3" tires were swimming. The tortoises would outrun me. Eventually I gained ~ 1000ft, and crested the plateau. Here the drainage (and thus the sand) thankfully ends. Here also is a nice view of the San Gabriels. And finally, here I left the BLM's Rand Mountain area, and entered the third-largest (by area) city in California. According to wikipedia. R5 becomes CC5. I flew down the residential streets. To be clear, they laid out the streets (in the cul-de-sac-y suburby style), graded them with a bulldozer, channelized all drainages so that they don't wash away the roads, placed white wooden posts at each intersection, and stopped there. There's no pavement, or any structures or signage or power lines or anything.
Whoa! A stop sign!
I ran the stop sign to discover that I was on Kennedy Blvd (boulevard!) all along.
I went left on Mojave-Randsburg, right on Lincoln, and Left on Kennedy (again). Periodically I'd see houses in the middle of the desert, some with planted trees!
I aimed at what the map claimed was "Galileo Park". The aerials even showed some sort of golf course or something. Pavement???
The hill is Galileo hill. The tiny area around it is paved, and has some early adopters. There're maybe 20 houses tops. This place is strange
I tried to visit the golf course but the security guy kicked me out. I guess most of CA city is no effectively an OHV area. They require each vehicle to be registered, so maybe that's an income stream for them.
I then took Redrock-Randsburg road all the way to the end, and made it to Randsburg eventually. This place is full of mines
The sign says that Randsburg is a "Living Ghost Town". What I think they mean by this is that there're a number of businesses on the main drag that don't look like they've been abandoned for too long, but nothing is open, and the town is deserted. The windchime store was open, I guess. Eventually I found the general store that was open. I was planning to camp, but I was feeling tired, so I asked the general store person about hotels. That somehow worked out, so instead of setting up camp somewhere, I went to the OTHER establishment that was open: the bar. The whole town looks like an antique store, and the hotel was no exception. I was the only guest. Only 48 miles, with maybe 3000ft gain. Everything is hard.
This was quite nice. I chatted with the hotel lady in the morning, and she mentioned something about the mines in the drainage behind the town. I made a little trip before heading out in the morning. Lots of stuff here, including the hole in the ground.
The big working in town was the Yellow Aster gold mine. It should be there somewhere. Maybe it became a strip mine eventually, and that actually is it.
So yeah. The previous day I went through the Rand Mountains, South of the road; today I'm going back via the El Paso Mountains, North of the road. R110 is a straight shot down to the bottom
At the bottom is the road, and around is is mysterious signage about R110 being closed to motor vehicles (i.e. 99% of everybody that comes here). This was probably an oversight, but the signs didn't apply to me, so I went across to the mouth of Goler Gulch. The road was fine, and there wasn't anything different about it. No idea what the deal was.
Heh? Am I lost?
Ah, that's better.
I should say that the BLM does a fantastic job of labeling the roads and intersections. Pretty much every route has a designation, with lots and lots of signage. And the OHV maps have all the routes too. Needless to say, there're mines and associated shacks everywhere
EP146 is routed inside Goler Gulch, so it is also very soft, and is very slow going. Eventually you get to the Narrows.
Vehicles drive through there! Eventually I saw EP159 climb out of the drainage, so I took that opportunity. Made things much easier. Had to cross Goler Gulch again on EP11.
Vehicles drive through there! Then took a little detour on EP26 to what the map says is "Sheep spring" and "petroglyphs". There's a little picnic area, and the spring is a little patch of grass behind a fence for some reason. The hole in the ground has a nice stone canopy, and there IS standing water in there. I guess if I was desperate, that would do. And on the hill above that are the petroglyphs
Bighorn must have lived here! The Southern Sierra (I think) and Ridgecrest are visible from the hill
Back on EP26, climb over the pass, and hook up with EP15
Then a climb up EP103 to...
Read about it here. It is not entirely clear to me why in an area FULL of tunnels, it is strongly recommended to avoid all of them, except this one. This place is impressive.
I biked through it to where it pops out on the other side.
Big views
I went back to EP15, and kept going downhill. Here the route enters Last Chance Canyon, and we leave BLM land to enter the Red Rock Canyon state park. The state does a piss poor job of labelling the routes. Lots of intersections unlabelled, where stuff IS labelled, the label just says "California State Park". In 2 places an intersection WAS clearly labelled: to direct the driver back to the highway NOT the way I went. And there are a number of unclear route closures in several places. I THINK I didn't violate any, but not 100% sure. Anybody thinking of going out there, contact the park for beta. The road is once again in the drainage. Initially it's steep enough to keep the speed up, but pretty soon I was once again swimming. At least this place is really scenic (looks better in person).
Eventually I climbed out on some badlands
Was looking forward to exiting via Nighmare Gulch, but ran into this:
Gah. I missed it by a day! Had I done this loop in the other direction, I could have ridden it! Fine. I'll climb out to Black Canyon instead.
Oof. It's steep and full of large rocks. Walked almost the whole thing. But then it turned out that this canyon is really cool
That last one is the road. Made it back a bit after 5, ditched the weight, and did a little loop in Hagen Canyon.
One could do worse. 40 miles, ~ 4000ft gain. The sand and terrain make things difficult. And now we all know what's here.
