Storming the Castle

When the Chicago Bears schedule was released earlier this spring, R and I talked about going to watch them play the Raiders in Vegas on September 28. A few of his March Madness buddies also expressed interest. But then we saw the ticket prices ($400+ 🤯) and decided to table that idea.

Fast forward to August when we hatched the plan to spend the weekend in Las Vegas as a stopover on the way to Great Basin National Park, regardless of whether or not we actually made it to the game in person or if any of his friends joined us. We set our price limit, and then R started tracking ticket prices on Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats, and SeatGeek like a day trader on Wall Street. 

We hit the road early this morning still ticketless, making our first stop at the headquarters for Mojave National Preserve in Barstow. After chatting with the ranger and getting my passport stamps, we continued driving to the Hole-in-the-Wall Information Center inside the park, about 2 hours away. The last time we visited Mojave NPRES was in 2010, but I didn't get a picture of the sign at the north entrance, so we made sure to snap a pic of the one off Essex Road. 

For the next 30 minutes, we enjoyed the view along the way and were especially thankful that the weather was not too hot today.

It was about 12:30PM when we arrived at the information center, but it was closed while the ranger was taking lunch. While we waited, we fixed sandwiches for ourselves in the car and then hiked a portion of the nature trail towards the campground.

 

The ranger opened up the doors around 12:45PM. I went inside to get the passport stamps and was excited to find that they had the America 250 stamps in celebration of the upcoming semiquincentennial. 

After we finished up here, we backtracked to I-40 and then took Historic Route 66 to US-95. As we were driving north towards Searchlight, we saw a funnel cloud forming to the west of the highway. Yikes!

Our next destination was Castle Mountains National Monument, which was established by executive order on February 12, 2016. Adjacent to Mojave NPRES, it can only be accessed by dirt roads and a high-clearance vehicle is recommended. This is partly why it has taken awhile to get this unit checked off our bucket list. Other folks from my national parks club have said that a regular car is fine on the graded gravel road into the park, but we rented a Nissan Rogue for this road trip just to be safe. 

From NV-164 (Nipton Road), we turned onto Walking Box Ranch Road and followed it back across the border into California and the national monument.

No roadrunners here, Mr. Coyote!

☑ Unit #212 for me and #206 for R

As we drove further into the monument, we saw remnants of Joshua trees burned in the 2023 York Fire, which began on July 28. The wildfire covered more than 90,000 acres.

Since the skies were looking ominous, we decided to turn around and head out. Good thing we did because not long after, it started to rain hard with water/run-off collecting on the gravel road. Thankfully, we made it back to Nipton Road safely and continued on our way to the hotel in Henderson without incident.

425 miles, 7.25 h

We drove into Boulder City for dinner at the Cornish Pasty Co. Afterwards, we walked around downtown for a bit - a lot of the touristy stores were closed since they probably get most of their visitors during the day, but it was nice to not be surrounded by crowds of people. A very pleasant evening!

Reuben pasty, Carne Adovada pasty, and a Scotch egg - yum!