Moominmama's Adventures

In which Moominmama hugs a 3,000 year-old tree and thrills to the views from the Alabama Hills in California... Due to a couple of errors, Moominmama did not make her planned camping spot after exiting Death Valley, but this turned into the best mistake she ever made when she landed at the foot of Mount Whitney in the Alabama Hills. She's been drinking her coffee most mornings outside, watching the sun light up the snow and grey cliffs of the Sierras. I am not the only person to feel like I've discovered a gem. Hollywood has used this area around Lone Pine for television and movies since silent film. If you ever watched the Lone Ranger, Bonanza, How the West Was Won or more recently Django Unchained, you've seen the Alabama Hills. They've even been a stand-in for India in the film Gunga Din or for exotic planets in Star Trek. And there's a funny story about how it came by its name. During the Civil War, early prospectors sympathetic to the South named the area after...

  Wherein Moominmama visits the red-light district of Rhyolite, makes a new friend and explores the driest desert in North America... As Moominmama reaches the end of her tour of the Mohave desert, it's hard to imagine that Death Valley has been a place of human habitation for a long time.  The Timbisha Shoshone people have been here for hundreds of years and continue to live here after fighting successfully for the right to a parcel within the national park near Furnace Creek. There are roughly 30-35 Shoshone who live here, and they call this land Timbisha. It has been a land of life, not death, for them. Mesquite trees, which can run their roots deep into the soil to reach the underground aquifer, grow long green pods that will dry and provide a nutritious flour. In the mountains, there are piñon trees with delicious pine nuts (yum!) Co-existence with the parks staff hasn't always been easy. My new friend Alissa, an archeologist who works for the park service here, said one ...

In which Moominmama deals with setbacks, scares and repairs ... There won't be as many photos in today's post because Moominmama had to put her efforts into keeping the Moominhouse operational. I intended to spend a few days at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area outside Las Vegas hiking, but instead, I'm in the city looking for parts, making calls and troubleshooting. It seems like a close call happens at least once per travel season. This time it wasn't a tornado, but the Moominhouse got sideswiped by an 18-wheeler that moved into her lane before she was out of it! Imagine my surprise! I thought it was just a close call at the time and only discovered we'd bumped when I arrived at my next stop. There, I discovered a window scraped and cracked in one corner. (See photo: fairly minor.) Later, I would find a couple other problems on the same side of the trailer: a fan that helped cool the fridge stopped working, and a storage compartment hinge has cracked. The...

Wherein Moominmama further explores the flora, fauna and surprises of the Mohave Desert... Having moved north from Joshua Tree National Park, Moominmama is still in the Mohave desert, still seeing Joshua trees, yucca and cactus. But the creosote bushes are less common, replaced by sagebrush and rabbit brush as I move to a higher elevation in the Mohave National Preserve.  The rhyolitic rocks and tuff (compressed ash) at Hole in the Wall are still sculpted by erosion but very differently from the monzogranite of Joshua Tree, which looks nothing like the granite of the Northeast! Monzogranite is sand-colored, rough to the touch and erodes into a pebbly sand. Contrary to expectation, these deserts are far from desolate. Moominmama has enjoyed climbing through these rocks (the hole in the wall!) and catching glimpses of jackrabbits in the valleys. Their enormous ears are used not just for hearing but to help cool their bodies in the heat.  Not that there's been much heat here late...