Midhills Campground at Mojave National Preserve
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We love the Hole-in-the-Wall Campground at Mojave National Preserve, but the afternoons are just too hot for comfort this time of year. We figured the other campground in the Preserve at 5600’ (1707m) would be a smidge cooler. After an early morning loop walk, we packed up and headed to Midhills, up Black Canyon Road, a tooth-loosening, washboard of a gravel road, then another two miles up Wild Horse Canyon Road.
We had refilled our water jugs at the Visitor’s Center before heading out as there is no fresh water available at Midhills. There is, however, free Starlink wifi at the entry kiosk at Midhills which is a big positive.
Starlink at the Midhills entry Kiosk was a pleasant surprise
Huge boulders are strewn randomly along the roadside and on the desert floor reminding us that we were traveling in the caldera of a huge extinct volcano.
Our campsite #21 was just perfect… spacious, lots of juniper and pinyon pine to provide shady little nooks for our camp chairs. Trash and recycle bins were just across the road and the site was reasonably close to the clean, well-stocked vault toilet. A constant, gentle breeze and the increase in altitude kept it much cooler than Hole-in-the-Wall. We were the proverbial ‘happy campers’.
Site #21 at the Midhills Campground was just perfect
On our after-dinner campground walk-around, there were very few occupied campsites. Pale pink Palmer’s penstemmon, orange apricot mallow and bright yellow plains pricklypear were in bloom. We counted only three other campers in the entire place. We settled in for a quiet, peaceful night.
About 8:45 pm, a truck stopped in front of our site and began backing into the site opposite ours, its bright headlights shining into Blanche. The big truck engine roaring, it must have taken him 30 minutes or more to get situated. Once his engine quieted, we heard more in the near distance.
The music started around 10 PM. Heavy on the bass, our recently washboard road-loosened dental work began vibrating with the beat. Sometime around 1 AM, the music stopped.
Morning found all the campsites around us occupied with herds of people and a swarm of large 4WD trucks. I queued up at the vault toilet to wait my turn. The once clean, well-stocked toilet was a wreck. Toilet paper on the floor and none on the roll. I won’t go on to describe the disaster zone, but you get the picture.
After a quick morning walk, grousing all the way, we returned to Blanche. The music began before we returned. We thought that perhaps we’d find a different site, but to insure no one else had booked a site, we needed to have wifi to check available sites. That’s when we discovered that the Starlink kiosk was not working. The other alternative, driving back down the gravel road to the Hole-in-the-Wall info center was not attractive. In the end, we gave up and headed out of the Preserve. It was disappointing, but we rationalized that we had lots to do at home, so perhaps it was a prudent decision, though certainly not our first choice.
Heading down Cedar Canyon and Cima Roads to exit the Preserve, we passed through a forest of Joshua trees stretching up the hillsides and across the desert floor. Sacred datura dotted the roadside. A whiptail lizard caught our attention and stuck around long enough for a photo. We saw the trailhead for the Teutonia Peak Trail. Though it was too hot to hike at the moment, it lifted our spirits a bit. We’d return another time and hope for a little less company.
And then we were back on I-15, heading home thinking about our next getaway.
