Greetings friends, and welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido, and we are in Whitney Pocket in the beautiful Mojave Desert of southern Nevada,
where we're boondocking within Gold Butte National Monument, so come along.
After leaving our last boondocking camp along the Burr Trail in southern Utah,
before heading out into the remote desert to Whitney Pocket
we spent one night at the Casablanca Resort Casino in Mesquite, Nevada
to dump and fill our tanks, take long showers, and get some grocery shopping in.
The RV park at the Casablanca costs $35 per night for full hookups.
While the park itself is nothing to write home about --
it's essentially a paved parking lot with utility pedestals --
a stay at the Casablanca includes access to all of the casino's facilities,
including this beautiful pool complex.
My strained back continues to mend,
and a long soak in the casino's hot tub is helping immensely.
We also walked to dinner at one of the casino restaurants,
where shockingly this Barefoot Pinot Grigio was $8 per BOTTLE,
a price that's more typically by the glass.
And best of all, we were allowed to take home with us what we didn't finish!
Whitney Pocket sits about 30 miles south of Mesquite,
and northeast of Lake Mead's northern arm within Gold Butte National Monument.
While the last 21 miles along Gold Butte Road is "paved,"
and I put that word in air quotes,
it seemingly has almost as many patches as original pavement, and is therefore very rough.
It's not for the faint of heart and we had to take it slowly.
It took us 75 minutes to travel those last 21 miles.
At that pace, we at least have time to enjoy the desert flora during this spring's super bloom.
But a campsite at Whitney Pocket is well worth the effort.
We've picked for ourselves one of about a half dozen undesignated campsites
tucked among the multi-colored Aztec sandstone outcroppings,
where the pavement ends at an elevation of 3,000 feet.
We're surrounded by Joshua trees, various cacti and blooming purple sage.
Come prepared, for this is about as remote as RV camping gets.
Our Salt Lake City friends Colin & Abby have joined us for a few of our days camping here.
Our week at Whitney Pocket as been wonderfully quiet,
with no more than a half dozen vehicles and ATVs passing by each day.
When we come back following a quick ad break
we'll explore this part of Gold Butte National Monument surrounding our campsite,
including some old CCC projects, the geologically spectacular Little Finland,
a desert oasis, and even a search for the eastern shoreline of Lake Mead, so stick around!
We're taking a walk from our camp to a spot just up the road, a place called The Cistern.
The Gold Butte gold rush began in 1906,
bringing an estimated 2,000 or more miners and support personnel to this area
that had likely seen little visitation since the native peoples.
The gold rush here was short lived, ending in 1909.
In the 1930’s, the depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps came to Whitney Pocket
to establish a camp and build a water cistern,
along with other improvement projects in the Gold Butte area.
This cistern they built is still in place,
an immense block and concrete structure complete with stairs to climb up and down both sides.
Here across the road from the cistern, at the site of a CCC camp,
crews also walled off several alcoves for storage, with some of the walls still in place.
We've also seen reference to an ancient rock art panel
a few hundred yards further up the road, so we'll try to locate those as well.
They're very well hidden, but we've located the small petroglyph panel.
The dirt roads get far rougher beyond our campsite,
studded with embedded rocks that make for a jarring ride.
It's good to have two vehicles out here in case of mechanical issues,
as help would be a long time coming.
Colin is following us for the 12-mile, one-hour drive to visit Little Finland.
Eventually our route changes from rough dirt road to a rocky 4x4 trail down a desert wash.
Colin and I have parked our trucks in Mud Wash,
and we're crossing these low red hills to shortcut several additional miles of driving.
Entering the final wash that leads to Little Finland,
the ground is now partially stained white by salt deposits.
Here at Little Finland, a plateau of red Aztec sandstone has been heavily eroded
into amazingly complex structures of intricate forms,
bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun.
Another rough dirt road heading east from our camp leads to Whitney Pass,
along the south side of Virgin Peak.
Here atop the pass, we've parked next to an abandoned circular cement watering trough
to go exploring.
After a short off-trail hike we're treated to stunning views of the Mojave Desert
from some 2,000 feet of elevation above Whitney Pocket.
The mountains out here are separated by wide bajadas,
alluvial fans formed by the deposition of sediment onto flat land at the base of the mountains,
so the views stretch all the way to the horizon.
Following another quick ad break to pay the bills,
we'll descend Whitney Pass to a desert oasis, as well as go hunting for Lake Mead, so stay tuned!
George “Luke” Whitney came to the Gold Butte area in 1910,
and purchased the Aravada Ranch on the east side of the pass, along the Arizona border.
The Whitneys spent summers at the ranch adjacent to some cold water desert springs,
and soon began hosting guests.
Whitney Pocket and Whitney Pass are both named for Luke,
and his grandchildren still run Aravada Springs today.
We arrived at Aravada Springs unannounced,
but Greg Isaac, whose wife is a grandchild of Luke Whitney,
was excited to give us a tour of the property.
Owners have built numerous guest cabins,
or guests may also stay in one of several teepee tents erected on concrete foundations.
The focus here at Aravada Springs is on quiet relaxation,
and the spring water is collected in two retaining ponds,
one of which is designed for swimming and soaking.
Today we're going to head off on one more vehicle exploration,
attempting to reach the eastern shore of Lake Mead...
or at the very least, what was once the lake's eastern shore.
West of our camp, another dirt road heads south
from the paved Gold Butte Road towards Fisherman's Cove.
Like our drive to Little Finland, it begins on graded dirt
before eventually devolving into a rocky 4x4 trail descending a dry wash.
At the lake's high water mark, even the 4x4 trail all but disappears,
and we're now essentially overlanding down the wash in search of water.
The northern arm of Lake Mead is supplied by the Virgin River.
In today's low water era, however, Fisherman's Cove
is too far upstream to still be part of the reservoir.
So instead of a lake cove, today we're finding here
the rushing sediment-laden springtime snowmelt of the Virgin River.
Down here at river level it's already 99ºF this afternoon in early May,
some 16 degrees hotter than it is at our campsite.
Thanks to this year's spring runoff, the normally placid Virgin River
is more like Willy Wonka's river of chocolate.
So we truly hope that you've enjoyed visiting Whitney Pocket in the Gold Butte National Monument with us!
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