Report #8 - Pinnacles to Boron 

Me at the Tehachapi Loop Marker.

From Mountain View I headed straight back to Pinnacles National Monument where I spent three more days hiking.  On the second day I met Rick, a full-time RVer who travels from wilderness area to wilderness area and spends a month or more at each place hiking.  He has been coming to Pinnacles for several years, has been just about everywhere in the park and has the place pretty much memorized.  We hiked together on my third day, and he took me on a  mostly cross country loop that included two of the park's major peaks (Mt. Defiance 2,657ft and North Chalone Peak 3,304ft).  I was amazed at his ability to follow animal trails from memory through thick bushes with very little backtracking, and not much bushwacking as we visited some of the park's out-of-the-way places.  I hope I'll meet up with Rick again somewhere for some more hiking. 

After 3 days of hiking in clouds and showers, I left Pinnacles on Monday under a cloudless sky and headed east to Goshen where I spent the night in a noisy, muddy, and expensive RV park.  The Tehachapi Loop was the highpoint of the day Tuesday.  The loop is a feature of the railroad tracks climbing toward Tehachapi Pass where the track makes a complete circle and passes over itself.  It was constructed about 130 years ago and is considered one of the seven wonders of the railroad world. 

I'm now at the Arabian RV Oasis in Boron (where I had a close encounter with a tree), just north of Edwards Air Force Base.  The borax mine here is the source of about one-half of the world's borax.  Quartzsite is more than 200 miles from here so I will probably take two more days to get there.