Shaded by a Monolith

February 28 - March 3, 2017
Sawtooth Campground, CA

We left our abandoned RV park in Death Valley and headed south through the hills tp Barstow California.  Ellen had found a possible boondocking spot on Allstays just south of there, but as always, you don't drive your RV someplace you're not sure you can't escape from without checking it out first.

I stayed at a Walmart in Barstow while she drove about twenty miles to Sawtooth Canyon.  She called the OK and away I went…   There were no signs on the main road telling me where to turn off, but Ellen had directed me where to turn, and that I would be going about one mile down a washboard road to find the area.  She had a spot picked out, but was worried a huge boulder would shade us too much to make our solar panels effective.  When she said "washboard" it didn't really prepare me for the bouncy experience that followed.  Dished rattled, but cupboard doors stayed closed and nothing was shaken up too badly except my nerves.

Climbed on the rock to look down on the RV

I think Sawtooth Canyon may have been a regular campground at one point in it's history.  The boondocking site all had shelters and site numbers.  And there was a camp host site.  A sign next to it proclaimed "Volunteer Camp Host Wanted".  A phone number was given. While the hiking was good, it appeared to be a rock climbing campground.  There were spikes in the tops of some of the monolithic rocks to attach climbing ropes.

We did get good sunshine to refill our batteries, but not enough to completely fill them.  The system would recover all but about ten to fifteen amp hours per day and then go into float mode, saying we were full.  So after three days we ended up about thirty five amp hours down.  We think it's a battery issue and not a charging issue, but we'll keep looking at this and soldier on.

Oh, and on the way out we avoided a ditch on one side of the road only to scratch the other side of our coach on a bush.  We will be researching Gel Coat scratch removal soon!

Twins in our new sun hats!