It’s been about six months since I last posted in this blog,
which I know is HORRIBLE for two reasons: 1) What’s the point of having a blog
if you don’t update it regularly? 2) It makes it really difficult to recall the
things I plan to write about, but I’ll do my best anyway.
In today’s post, let’s talk about my second trip to the
desert, which was Easter weekend, in April of 2015.
El
Mirage dry lake bed is in part of the Mojave Desert, which is located in San Bernardino
county. As the name suggests, it's exactly that: a dried-up lake bed, which in some parts of the year is off-limits for off-road recreation vehicles due to the softness of the mud. When we went there, it was exactly what I pictured a desert to be: dry, dusty, and hot.
In the true spirit of Southern California, it’s one of many natural areas that’s
preserved by the BLM as best as it can be, but of course they make a profit by selling
permits so people can actually go out and enjoy it. Perhaps this is more an urban thing than a California thing, but as someone who grew up in the middle of a forest, it's just sad to see how we destroy nature and charge a fee for people to enjoy what's left of it.
But that's a tree-hugging post for another day. I digress.
On the first night, David and I camped alone,
and we found a nice secluded area out in the middle of nowhere to have a
campfire and grill some hamburgers.
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| Taking a break after a ride. |
On the second day, the rest of David's family arrived, and so
we joined them in the camping areas. There were probably about twenty of us
altogether, including parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins,
second-cousins, significant others, and a dog or two. Almost everyone in the
family rides dirt bikes and quads (or four-wheelers, as we call them back
home), and much of the weekend involved taking a backpack of beer and speeding
off into the distance. I learned how to drive David’s sister’s quad (which wasn’t
too difficult since I’d driven four-wheelers before. And, well, it’s a quad. Simplicity is one of the things that makes them so fun to ride).
People who grow up in suburbia probably don’t understand the
peace of mind that comes from being out in wild areas. For me, I welcome any opportunity
to get away from the urban area I’ve been living in, shut down the Internet for
a while, and just be in the moment. It’s never more important to be in the moment
than when you’re speeding along a dusty trail on a massive piece of machinery.
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| The Joshua Tree. You don't see things like that in NY. |
As someone who grew up in a rural area, it’s not just a luxury
to go camping, it’s a necessity. The
longer I live in southern California, the more necessary it becomes.
For the most part, I remember there not being many other
campers at El Mirage, so we didn’t have to worry too much
about crowding or running into other people. We did some Easter crafts, as per
David’s mom’s request, and tried not to get too sunburned.
Keep in mind, I’m a
redhead from the Northeast, so “sunburn” is basically in my job description.
In the true spirit of Easter, we decided to have an adult
Easter egg hunt, or rather, Easter Beer Hunt. The rules were simple—the adults (the
ones 40 or older), hid bottles of beer around the campsite, and the young
adults had to race to find them. You could only carry one beer at a time, and
each time you found one, you had to bring it to your chair before going out to
find another. Competition is tough when you’re racing against family,
especially a family that loves its beer. I don’t remember who found the most bottles, nor
do I remember how many I had, but it was all in good fun anyway. When all the
bottles were found, we traded beers (“I’ll give you a Heineken for your Ballast
Point”), popped the tops, and drank up.
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| The Easter Beer Hunt! And they're off! |
By the end of the weekend, we all went home with proper
sunburns, beer bellies, and sand in our teeth, ready to tackle the stress of
modern civilization. I'd definitely recommend it as a place for weekend fun, and if you're interested in going, here's a link where you can find out the cost of permits and some other interesting, scientific stuff I didn't care to include in my post. Happy camping!
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