Saturday – Twenty Nine Palms, California

Well, I was a bit seedy this morning after that concoction I drank last night which made me start late, who cares, not me 🙂 I only had a small ride today anyway, depending on what there is to see and where there is to stay.

I managed to post another blog update before getting on the road at about 11am or so. It was basically a reverse of yesterday arvo, back to that place called Baker, the only thing going for it is the largest thermometer in the world.

I fuelled up and had some lunch before locating the road to Amboy which is on the other side of the Mojave National Preserve.

It was still blowing its ring out which made for fun riding, not! As you can see, the flag is about rooted, it only has one star left and the Union Jack and I have had questions, are you a pom and one old chap asked if I was from Texas as they have a single star on their state flag. I am going to remove that tonight when I stop, hopefully I can get it replaced with a new one, hint hint 🙂

Not much to say about this part of the trip, it was cold and windy, there was some more large sand dunes near Kelso, in the centre, but I only had a passing glimpse.

And a few rock outcrops made an interesting break to the monotonous desert.

There is probably more to see here, but in this wind I was not real interested, I actually just wanted to rest for a while, so I thought I may stop in Amboy. Just before the small town, which is on Route 66, there is this tree full of shoes, I had heard about this but had no idea where it was, now I know and so do you 🙂

I had a quick look around the servo/shop but the motel was closed. I spoke to a local that was working there and he said they were slowly getting the diner side of the servo working then when the food starts producing money, they could start renovating the motel side of things. He said to go to Twenty Nine Palms for a motel, that was another hour away, no worries, off I go. They had this old Dodge patrol car there, quite good really, the old black and white 🙂

This road was quite barren with flat nothing on one side and weird mounds/hills on the other, I am not sure if they are natural or manmade?

Then I came to the conclusion it was manmade as there was a Chloride plant just up the road, but I am not sure if it is Sodium Chloride (salt) or not, it did not really explain, but the water’s edge looked like salt.

More flat and boring landscape before I arrived in Twenty Nine Palms, although I saw a lot more palms than that!

I found a small motel, not too bad and it had under cover parking, except it was soft sand, so I parked the bike outside on the hard, I did not want the wind to drop it on its side again.

I had a relaxing time getting some blog stuff done, which I enjoy. I also fixed my loose mirror mounts and removed the tatty Aussie flag and folded the flag pole down and out of the way. After a while decided I may go have a beer 🙂 This was after 7pm mind you, so I walked up the road a while and asked a biker where the closest bar was, basically too far for me. I saw this other nice bike on the way back, but did not see the rider.

I ended up buying 3 large pint cans of Icehouse beer, some tucker and sorted some stuff out on the net.

It may not sound a very exciting way to spend a Saturday night in a strange town, but tomorrow I wanted to see Joshua Tree NP, so it was best I stayed quiet. Well, I did, until after midnight, lol, I got caught up watching a movie on the teev, the first time I have watched TV in the states.

Day – 198 miles and 319 km
Trip – 4,556 miles and 7,332 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom
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