For the first three installments of this story, you can follow these links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
After waking up and breakfast, we headed back south to Cima and then hooked back up with the Mojave Rd. It was time to finish the second half of our trip and head up to the New York Mountains.
On the way, we stopped by Camp Rock Spring and checked out the old cabin.
We then left the Mojave Road for a side trip up New York Mountain Rd to the New York Mountains.
As we drove along the road to our campsite, two snakes came out of the brush and decided this would be a good time and place to get it on.
Once they broke things up and moved on, I took a couple photos of them as we went by them.
The New York Mountains is another one of our favorite campsites.
Last year we stayed at 35.21886, -115.30940 so we tried a different spot this year at 35.21616, -115.31309. This was a real wide cul-de-sac spot with lots of rocks and trees circling the area.
It was hot when we arrived, even up at 5,440 feet. After it cooled off a bit, we had dinner and went for a walk around the area. We saw quite a bit of deer in the area.
The next day we stayed put and went for a day hike up Carruthers Canyon to Giant Ledge Mine.
This mine had an open mine shaft that we didn’t go explore. There were a lot of small campsites up this trail. The road past the trail head is expert only and the campsites aren’t big enough for a trailer, just a single vehicle, but we saw plenty of tire tracks going up.
After our hike we drove around Carruthers Canyon checking out the various campsites in the canyon. There is some private property in the canyon, but it’s marked and gated.
This was a pretty relaxing day. We went for another walk around the area hoping to see some more deer or other wildlife, then came back to camp and watched an amazing sunset.
The following day we headed back down New York Mountain Road and met back up with the Mojave Road. We elected, based on other drivers’ recommendations, not to drive down Watson’s Wash so we took the bypass.
I really enjoy this section of the Mojave Rd, east of Watson’s Wash. It’s very scenic and the road is very interesting. There are portions of the road where you’re driving down a “ditch” of sorts with very high walls. There is no way anyone can pass each other in this area. Luckily, we didn’t encounter any westbound traffic.
Along the say we found another abandoned cabin. It appears to be private property as it has a chain link fence around it. It wasn’t posted, which I found odd.
We passed the Ivanpah Railroad Memorial and continuing east, we came to the Mojave Tin Can. Yes, we paid our dues to cross.
The last major tourist sight along this section of the Mojave Road was the Mojave School Bus. To our surprise, we found it was removed. Pretty disappointed to learn it was gone. We’re lucky we saw it last year. I was also pretty disappointed in whomever removed it as they left a bunch of bus garbage behind too. If one is going to spend that much money to tow that thing out of the desert, you’d think you’d take everything instead of leaving a pile of garbage behind.
From the Mojave School Bus, we headed east to Fort Piute.
We did stumble across something odd. Where the Mojave Rd turns south to detour around the washout in the mountains, we noticed freshly laid road-mix and it was being graded. The intersection I’m referring to is located at 35.103145, -115.051789.
A few years ago, the route from Fort Piute through the mountains washed out and there was no timeline for it to be repaired. Now, I wonder if it has been repaired or is being repaired. Why would the government be spending the money to re-grade the western side of this route if they weren’t repairing the whole road? Yes, I get it…..it’s the government, but they are spending a lot of money to lay new road-mix and grade this area.
Shelley and I discussed it for a bit, but decided not to go check it out. I was concerned about not being able to get turned around easily with the trailer if the grading stopped before the washout for some reason and we had to turn around. We were pretty early in the day as well and didn’t need a short cut to Fort Piute.
Maybe someone who reads this can tell everyone if that route is reopened?
We continued down south and went by Leiser Ray Mine, as well as some other covered mine shafts along the way, then back up north to Fort Piute.
I have to say, I never plan on visiting Fort Piute again. That road from Gulch Road (I believe it is) up to the Fort is the worst.
Fort Piute is only at 2,770 feet and it was hot. There was no shade but for our trailer awnings. Ripley was not happy.
The area around the fort itself was very cool, however. There isn’t much left of the fort but some piles of rocks outlining the old foundation. We did some walks around the area once it cooled off.
We weren’t sure if camping was actually allowed near the fort, but we interpreted the signage to imply there was no camping beyond the sign, which is how most signage is meant to be read. This would make sense as beyond the sign was a hiking trail leading to the fort. If they didn’t want people camping in the area, I would have expected the sign to be posted on the road as you entered the area.
Either way, we backed down as far away from the fort as possible and spent the night.
We decided to get up early the next morning. As hot as the afternoon was, we knew the morning was going to be warm. Fort Piute has no protection from the morning sun rise. So we got up to an alarm clock, closed up and had a fast breakfast and headed to Beale’s Crossing.
Once we crossed Hwy 95, I was surprised at how technical the road became over on this east side. I’ve done a lot of reading about the Mojave Road and I never read anything about this area. At least with a trailer, it seemed more technical than anywhere else on the trip. I really had to be careful about my line and walking out ahead of us to look over the ups and downs before blindly heading over them. This caused us to take some time getting through this area.
Once on the Nevada side, the road turned more into a dry river bed wash area with lots of sand and this was pretty easy.
Then, finally, we arrived at Beale’s Crossing. The end of The Road.
We took our time making this drive. We wanted to stop along the way and see the sights and check out all the “stuff” along The Road. Our plan worked out pretty well. We didn’t even have a minor break on either the trailer or the truck this go around. I was really impressed how well the trailer handled everything that was thrown at it from sand, to rocks, to water crossings and the truck did great as well.
We had a great time traveling with Joene and Ralph. Death Valley was spectacular and the Mojave Road was just a lot of fun.
Now we need to start planning our next big trip from 2019.
Summit Ridge News 
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