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7 March 2025: Camping at Las Vegas Bay this weekend and just enjoying a relaxed moment in a favorite place with no specific demands on my time after several weeks of pushing ahead to get things done. It is nice to take a little bit of calm time randomly exploring and revisiting old favorite places, too. The night sky was beautiful, though there was a lot of light and noise from nearby campers. Still, I was able to just sit back and appreciate the amazingly beautiful world around me, and that was a rare luxury …
6 March 2025: Drove out to Grapevine Canyon, one of my favorite places to go for a little hike near Laughlin. The site is a short walk down a sandy wash that takes us through a sort of “portal” that consists of two “walls” of rocks on either side of the opening, and they are all etched with petroglyphs rising form the canyon floor to the sky. There are many many symbols carved into the stone, and no one really knows their meaning, but they are the timeless communications from the people who passed through here and found this place to be an important one. It is possible to climb up among the rocks and deeper into the back of the canyon, though this time I stayed towards the portal, content to climb up to my favorite petroglyph here, a line of sheep carved etched into a rock about halfway up the side of the canyon. It is possible to reach it by carefully climbing between rocks and loose gravel, and I always feel like “up” is easier than “down” (but that is probably the motivational factor of getting closer to the art). I spent some time just being here and in a sort of non-focused meditation observing the desert beyond and coming back to the individual etchings on the rock walls, and felt re-energized when I left …
5 March 2025: There’s that one stretch of Highway that is a known “speed trap” where we have to slow to 25mph from 70mph around the town of Searchlight Nevada, and today I decided to take a little detour “into” the town. I was pulled in by some mine artifacts that I had seen and photographed from the main road before, but this time I wanted to try to get closer. I randomly chose a road that seemed to go behind the hill with the remains of the mine on top, and I found some dirt roads that went further into the area where there were ruins. Eventually I came to a fence and no trespassing sign, but before that I had some interesting discoveries poking around the crumbled buildings and debris of another historical boom-and-bust story…
4 March 2025: Took the afternoon to go check out a new-to-me ghost town and a more isolated section of the Colorado River as I headed to Nelson NV on the edge of the Eldorado Wilderness. Nelson is the site of a quirky ghosttown with a mine tour, but beyond that the road continues to an over look and river access in an area that at this time of the year is pretty empty of people. There once was a big mining boom here and there were steamboats operating on the river that docked here, supplying the miners and moving ore downriver. Beyond the ghost town, there were some great opportunities to explore a little bit and appreciate some interesting terrain …
3 March 2025: Left the giant sandbox of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area and headed north into Nevada to one of my favorite “resting” places — Laughlin Nevada and the little strip of casinos that line the Colorado River. Not that I gamble in any of them. I just use the anonymity of this kind of adult tourism environment to rest up and re-organize with some creature comforts and wifi. And it’s a good location for some day-trip outdoor exploration. But first a nap…
2 March 2025: We brought everything together today, the final day of the Barlow Adventures training program, when we do a simulation of the actual Rebelle Rally routine of chasing checkpoints based on our own plotting. And it was a great day for Team Celebration! We got to put our skills together and actually find checkpoints on our own (under the watchful eyes of Nena Barlow, I4wDTA Master Trainer and owner of Barlow Adventures). We were successfully able to locate all our checkpoints within the time constraints of the exercise, and even managed to get “unstuck” easily when we started to get bogged down in some soft sand near the final CP of the day. Great teamwork and a great start for Team Celebration …
1 March 2025: One of my favorite days of the annual Barlow Adventures dune training is when we get to go into the really big dunes. It is usually the most exhausting day, and this year was no different in that sense. However the big difference for me was that I am part of a team that is taking the training this year, rather than being part of the larger Barlow Adventures family. And I am not doing the driving! As I will be navigator during the rally, and also as Jody really needs to learn to drive the Jeep in the dunes — she gets to do all the driving today. Still it’s been a fun day out here and great to see her build up her confidence in this intimidating terrain. Very glad that we all got to go out to the swingset, even if it was challenging for some of us. Just making it there is a confidence booster for the drivers, and it’s always fun to play in the sand…
THIS MONTH:
Joining the Barlow Adventures Rebelle Rally training for an intensive sand dune driving and navigation practice at the Imperial Sand Dunes in southern California. This is a seven-day driving and navigation program that focuses on moving safely and effectively through large dunefields with skills-building exercises intended to improve pace, line choice and vehicle control. There is a full classroom day of navigation instruction focused on mapping and understanding the basics of plotting and route planning on paper maps, as well as increasingly challenging in-the-field practice to develop precision map and compass navigation skills. It all culminates in a final day of “chasing checkpoints” out in the big dunes…
COMING UP SOON:
Trail Guiding for the California 4-Wheel Drive Association’s fifth annual Death Valley Experience fundraiser event. Each day will feature a choice of runs to some famous, some infamous and some secretive points of interest within Death Valley National Park. Some of the points of interest we may visit during Death Valley Experience 2025 include Zabriskie Point (famous), Barker Ranch (infamous) and the Racetrack (learn the secret of the moving rocks). Other points of interest include Dante’s View, 20 Mule Team Canyon, Artists’ Drive, Chloride Cliffs, Aguereberry Point, Skidoo, Titus Canyon, and Darwin Falls. All of the trail runs are suitable for novice drivers and SUVs with high clearance and 4-wheel drive…
USnomads.org is very proud to be presenting the fourth edition of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally in 2025. This is a unique kind of rally experience — a ten week event that participants can do from anywhere within the continental U.S.A. Competitors design their own routes as part of the rally, then drive it in a points-based online competition that includes optional activity tasks, quests and weekly challenges. The 2025 rally will run from 2 June – 10 August and is open to any driver within the United States who has an off-road capable vehicle — stock or modified. Registration for 2025 is currently open. For more information see the Rally website …
This October JoMarie Fecci of USnomads.org will be joining with Jody DeVere of AskPatty.com to form TEAM CELEBRATION, competing in the 10th Anniversary edition of the Rebelle Rally, as Team 111. Team Celebration will be busy in the coming months, training for the great adventures ahead as they hone their driving and navigation skills and prepare for the mental challenges the Rally will bring …
ELDORADO CANYON
El Dorado Canyon is famed for its rich silver and gold mines. According to local lore, the Spanish explorers from Mexico and their Indian guides discovered gold in Eldorado Canyon as early as 1775. It was not until the news of a discovery of gold by Johnny Moss, a trapper who discovered ore in the Opal Mountains during the spring of 1861, that a rush of prospectors from California were attracted to Eldorado Canyon. The canyon, which drains into the Colorado River at the former site of Nelson’s Landing, was named by steamboat entrepreneur Captain George Alonzo Johnson, who made a deal to supply the mines with his steamboats. Within a year, the Southwest Mining Company and El Dorado Mining Company had established working mines in the valley. The Techatticup Mine, which was the principal mine of Eldorado Canyon, opened in 1863. By this time four different townsites had been laid out, but the canyon was isolated, supplies difficult to bring in, and the camps had reputations for violence and lawlessness. In 1865 a post office was established, and in 1867 an Army Military Post was established to protect the steamboat traffic from hostile Indians. The Techatticup Mine was the most productive in the district, and by 1883 the company constructed its own fifteen-stamp mill to avoid the expense of freighting the ore for processing. With the coming of the railroad in 1905, mining revived in the district, and a fifty-ton smelter was developed seven miles west of Eldorado Canyon. A new townsite was laid out closer to the smelter and mines, and the older settlement moved to the new town of Nelson where a new cyanide mill was constructed to process the gold. The mines continued to produce ore until World War II. The town of Nelson lies in the upper reaches of Eldorado Canyon, and today the ghost town boasts a mine tour at the Techatticup Mine one of the most productive in the canyon (over half of the total production for the area was mined from the Techatticup mine)…
SEARCHLIGHT NEVADA
Searchlight experienced a significant gold mining boom in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Gold ore was first discovered in Searchlight by Paiute Indians in 1870, 55 miles south of Las Vegas, but it was not until 1897, when George Frederick Colton, a notable prospector, discovered a rich gold vein and word spread, that Searchlight boomed. The Quartette Mill opened in 1898 and soon became one of the city’s finest producers. In 1902 the first newspaper, Searchlight, began publishing, and a twenty-stamp mill was constructed by the Duplex Mining Company. In 1903 a miners’ strike brought the town’s production to a standstill until the mining companies brought in non-union miners to work the mines. The boom peaked during the spring of 1907 when the first train of the Barnwell & Searchlight Railroad arrived in Searchlight’s station to a warm greeting of a fifty-piece cowboy band. The town reached a peak population of 5,000 with 44 working mines before being hard hit by the financial panic of 1907. The city recovered after a number of years and by 1910 was noted for its fashionable and modern amenities and its commuter train. The community boasted a luxurious hotel, several saloons, a barbershop, lumberyard, shops, cafes, union halls, boarding houses, schools, several stables, the newspaper, and its own hospital. The biggest mines were the Quartette, Cyrus Noble, Little Brown Jug, Old Bottle, and Duplex, whose gold production totaled $7 million. In 1934 a flotation mill was built and a 30-ton custom mill ran briefly in 1935. The town had a resurgence with the construction of the nearby Hoover Dam and was the site of the El Rey Bordello in the 1940s and early 1950s until the bordello burned down. However, by then little was left of the once modern boomtown of Searchlight. The last gold mine ceased operating around 1953…
Nesconset | Paris | Belgrade | Oklahoma City | Lawton | Amarillo | Yuma | Phoenix | Sedona | Las Vegas | Death Valley
MORE NOTES FROM THE ROAD:
22-28 February – Roadtrip SW
15-21 February – Roadtrip SW
1-14 February – New York
January – Paris
23-31 December – Holiday Roadtrip
16-22 December – Holiday Roadtrip
18-15 December – New York
8-30 November – New York
1-7 November – Roadtrip South
23-31 October – Roadtrip South
15-22 October – Roadtrip South
8-14 October – Roadtrip South
1-7 October – Roadtrip South
September – New York
August – New York
26-31 March – Eastbound
20-25 March – NM
15-19 March – DVE
9-14 March – AZ
1-8 March – NV & AZ
23-29 February – Glamis
Archive
ROADTRIP
An epic journey crisscrossing the USA from east to west and back again, exploring some of the beautiful wild spaces that make up our “public lands.” The roadtrip covered almost 15,000 miles, much of it off-grid and off-pavement, focusing on the deserts of the American southwest. Some locations were truly “iconic” while others were little known, and the segments of independent exploration where punctuated with some fun events across the region… [read]
SPECIAL REPORT
All about exploring ghost towns and abandoned places in the USA and beyond, with tips, and information on the many different types of sites to be found across the globe, including detailed guides for eight specific sites… [read]
LOCATION
This installment of a series that focuses on locations around the USA takes a look at some favorite places near our home base in NY. We share a few places we like to explore, where you can experience something of the raw natural beauty of coastal beaches, pine barrens and a little bit of obscure military history… [read]
