Southern California SUV Trails - Volume II - The Eastern Mojave Desert

A Guide to 32 Interesting and Scenic four-Wheeling Excursions in the Mojave Desert

The 366 page book describes 32 backcountry outings in the eastern part of California’s Mojave Desert. These rough road adventures will take the four-wheeler on interesting excursions out of Barstow, Baker, Shoshone, Primm, Ludlow, Kelso, Mitchell Caverns, Needles, and Twentynine Palms. As always, Roger and Loris Mitchell describe the flora, fauna, geology, and history encountered along the way. Included are the most interesting portions of the historic Mojave Road, including Afton Canyon, Soda Lake, Marl Spring, Rock Spring, and Fort Piute. We will visit a more recent, but equally historic Army base, where one of General Patton’s Divisions trained in the desert before the landing in Tunisia in 1943. We will follow the now trackless roadbeds of three former railroads, and explore mines that once produced gold, silver, lead, copper, iron and talc. Other notable landmarks of the Eastern Mojave we visit include a portion of the Old Spanish Trail, a lava tube, two enormous open pit mines, and a place where a dinosaur left its footprints in wet sand some 200 million years ago. Each trail description includes detailed directions, route maps, a degree of difficulty rating, and GPS coordinates at key intersections.