The old Mojave Road was the southernmost route used to cross to the west coast by missionaries, the military, and various other groups, starting with Juan Batista de Anza's expedition in 1776. It is a 138 mile trail across the Mojave National Preserve from the Colorado river (and Nevada border) to Afton canyon, just west of Baker, CA (familiar to those Angelinos who make the weekend pilgrimage to Vegas). It crosses through historic forts, near stalactite-filled caverns, past many petroglyphs, lava tubes, cinder cones, early desert settler relics, and large canyons, all along some rough 4x4 roads. If you are interested in repeating this trip, I recommend saving these coordinates on Dirtopia at a minimum, and suggest purchasing Adler Publishing's California Trails - Desert Region book, which has integrated trail directions, GPS coordinates, and lots of information on the various areas you pass through.
For this trip, we rented a classic 2 door Jeep Wrangler (this was before the FJ Cruiser, and this rental provided me with more reasons of why I didn't want a Jeep as my main car). We left on a Friday late morning and reached the starting point of Needles, CA with enough time to set up our tent at a KOA, grab some dinner and go to sleep. Saturday we began the drive, crossed over the Colorado River, and headed west into the Mojave NP, where we visited Fort Piute and Piute Spring, an old army base with many Native American petroglyphs. There was a Jeep meetup going on at the time, which led us to believe that the road was going to be much busier than expected, but it turned out that everyone only went to the main destinations and didn't travel the Old road, which provided for a much more pleasant trip.
For this trip, we rented a classic 2 door Jeep Wrangler (this was before the FJ Cruiser, and this rental provided me with more reasons of why I didn't want a Jeep as my main car). We left on a Friday late morning and reached the starting point of Needles, CA with enough time to set up our tent at a KOA, grab some dinner and go to sleep. Saturday we began the drive, crossed over the Colorado River, and headed west into the Mojave NP, where we visited Fort Piute and Piute Spring, an old army base with many Native American petroglyphs. There was a Jeep meetup going on at the time, which led us to believe that the road was going to be much busier than expected, but it turned out that everyone only went to the main destinations and didn't travel the Old road, which provided for a much more pleasant trip.
From the Fort, we travelled west over an extremely rough and rocky pass, surprised that we didn't get a flat tire. Unfortunately, being our first offroading and backroad navigating experience, we wound up a few miles too far north, and were skirting a gorgeous canyon in Lanfair Valley before reaching a set of rough stadium jumps and sharp terrain, which did give us a flat tire! After swapping out the spare, we turned around, found the right trail, and at the intersection of Lanfair Valley Road, beared south to reach the nearest tire shop, which turned out to be many miles away, on the south side of I-40, in a "town" called Essex. The town was completely run down with the exception of a post office and a mechanics garage that charged a whopping $5 to fix our flat.
A couple hours behind, but back on track, we return to the Old Mojave Road where we left off, and head west to Black Canyon Rd, where we spend a night at Mid Hills Campground after viewing one of the most incredible desert sunsets that I have set my eyes on. Nights got fairly cold here, and the fire was a very welcome addition to the evening.
We awoke on Sunday for an adventure-filled day, starting with a ranger-led tour of the Mitchell Caverns State Natural Preserve, within the Providence Mountains SRA. These are some fun little caverns with well preserved formations, sitting in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve. It is also accessible via paved road from I-40, and thus recommended even if you are just passing through.
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