EISPIRATEN

My wife wanted to see some wildflowers so we went out to Mojave this past weekend to do a little sightseeing. This was my first trip to the desert (beside driving through it). We camped at Hole in The Wall. The winds were so strong when we arrived Friday night that we couldn't set up our tent, so we slept in the car. Saturday we did a nice 4 mile loop near Hole in the Wall, and saw 2 wild horses. I climbed a fun rocky knob while my wife was checking out the flowers. We went over to Mitchell Caverns in the afternoon, and then did a short hike up to a spring above the caverns. The winds died down Saturday afternoon so we decided to set up our tent. About 9pm the winds kicked up and ripped our tent in a few spots, so we took it down and were back in the car. The next morning nearly every tent in the campground was in bad shape. I took off early early and climbed to what i later learned was Barber Mountain. The summit register had entry's all the way back to 1970!. We packed up and took route 66 to Amboy crater. We hiked out to the crater and walked to the top and around the rim. We saw quite a few large lizards and a cool snake out there.

Here are some pictures of the wildflowers :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22804109@N ... 888385305/

The rest of the pictures are here:

http://flickr.com/photos/25210766@N07/s ... 00/detail/

What a great area to explore. Thanks for the pics and the TR.

I don't like tents even for backpacking, and only use them if it is raining. For car camping, life has gotten so much better since I bought my Yukon, since I can sleep in the back, whatever the weather.

We seem to be following each other around. I was at Amboy Crater on Saturday: http://www.mtsanjacinto.info/viewtopic.php?t=767

Yeah the tent I brought was a family car camping type tent, not built for wind, or any bad weather for that matter. I slept alot better than I thought I would in the car. (96 civic)

Amboy was awesome I am glad to see your pictures, our battery died when we were at hole in the wall. The lizards were loving all the grass hoppers. We were checking out this snake lounging on a rock, when a small lizard (4" or so) ran in front of the snake, and it struck the lizard and swallowed him alive!!! I think the snake was a red racer.