First outing for the 95% complete rear bumper skin
I intended to go north at a fork near the end - to Rockhouse Canyon. A bit more scenic at the end, but more folks know about it, so Butler Canyon was my fallback plan. Thank goodness I had one, because Rockhouse had somebody going up it to camp there. Unfortunately, it was a Ford Explorer clogging the trail, getting stuck every 100 feet or so. The trail used to be easy, until a flash flood three years ago made it MUCH tougher in places. For this Explorer, driven by a young woman with seemingly no offroad experience, with four guys (!) walking beside to help spot and laugh at her, it was almost too hard. Her running boards (!!) were beat to crap, the lack of a locker and street tires made for drama-filled wheel-spinning excitement on every 6" boulder she needed to climb. Except that it was an Explorer (the truck I HATE to see on "my" trails as much as the Jeep-That-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned), I would have cringed. As it was, she was just pure entertainment.
I turned around near the end - as soon as I was sure she wasn't going to dump her oil pan out onto the sand, and backtracked to go up *my* canyon. The Ocotillo cactii were blooming, but unfortunately, this wasn't the year for a good wildflower display. Spectacular star show until the moon rose over the hill to the east and then it was like a 100W light bulb turned on 100 feet away.
Chicken and rice pilaf for dinner with some pinot grigio, hash and a toasted english muffin for breakfast. Desert camping with STYLE.
On the way back this morning, came across an Acura (!) who had camped overnight on the easy part of the trail near the dry lake, but who had forgotten rule #1 of parking off the trail with a FWD vehicle - BACK off the trail to leave your drive wheels on the compacted sand near the trail. He had gone a foot too far with his front wheels, and it was spinning when I drove by. He offered up a pre-installed strap he thought would help save time with whoever came along. I advised him that his 1" ratchet strap webbing wasn't going to hold up, but he wanted to try anyway. It snapped with only 250-300 pounds force. Laughable. Pulled out my *real* recovery strap from Wheeler's Offroad and told him: "You call that a strap? Now THIS here's a STRAP!"
A minute later, he's driveable again. Two guys - no women in the Acura group. Sigh.....
