DWTH Day 44: Let’s Chat About Balloons & Wilderness

Stats

Many Water Sources

We camped about a half mile from our first water source. Usually, we prefer to camp further away, but when we looked for “flat enough” and “not many spikes,” we were left with few options. 

We grabbed a bit of water, and for once, we had several sources today. They were even spaced apart well! 🤯

The Sand

Today, our footing was also dominated by varying levels of sand. 

If you’ve ever walked on the upper portion of a beach away from the water, that’s sometimes what we’re working with. However, now do it with a backpack and for miles at a time. 

We followed various decommissioned roads with varying levels of sand and washes. Many of the “roads” through here were 4WD tracks before it became a protected wilderness area in 1994. Thus, they’re essentially two trails parking each other. 

That’s not to say that people haven’t bypassed the measly signpost and driven beyond. Clearly, someone had done so this year after the big rain at the end of January. Someone else did it in another area within 2 weeks because it covered the footprints of the person in front of us. 

Now, Let’s Chat About Balloons

Today, we picked up 5 balloons. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in the desert. Those cute little helium balloons end up in cacti far from where they graced someone’s birthday party. 

If you’re one of those people who spends money on helium balloons, maybe consider finding a biodegradable option. 

If you’re a parent, maybe just don’t even get your kid these because they’ll lose them, which is essentially littering. It’s the same as throwing trash out your car window. Don’t do it. 

🚨 Reconsider balloons! 🎈🚮 

Rant over. 

A Low Pass

All day, we slowly climbed up what seemed like an uplifted valley floor. Eventually, we got close enough to the mountains to slip through a low pass for a new vantage point. 

The way up occasionally had bits of burro trail, but it dissolved into rodent trails…maybe some sort of prairie dog-type rodent?

Either way, the grass had those really annoying stickers, so we used any tread the wildlife gave us. 

We got up and over without much difficulty since the bulk of the climb happened slowly over the course of the morning. 

Burro and Cow Trails

Coming down from the pass, we found a burro and cow trail that offered bits of tread other than sand. 

We took these as much as possible as the route followed a series of very sandy washes. 

Apparently, neither burros nor cows like deep sand. 

Petroglyphs

While walking in one of the unavoidably sandy stretches, I looked up to see some petroglyphs!  I called to Karma who had pushed ahead head-down, and he was overjoyed. 

We hopped out of the sandy wash on a cow trail and found a lot more. 

I slowly found bits of sun left to keep warm while Karma took pictures of all of them he could see. 

Camp

Ironically, we were now higher than the low pass on a different plateau. 

We continued until our start-looking-for-campsite time. Expecting wind, we were also looking for a Mojave Yucca or Boulder for a wind block AND 10-15 lb rocks to keep our stakes in the ground. 🪨 

This proved a bit more difficult than normal. We followed cow trails around on a paralleling ridge to the route until we found a door wide enough for our two-person tent. Usually, the cows clear out spaces for a few of them to lay together. They did not this time, and we had to find a naturally occurring opening. 🤷🏼‍♀️