Ghost town Road Trip

Beautiful picture huh? Sunday July 2nd I finally got off my butt for a road trip and took a ride out into the Mojave Desert. Inspired by a page I found on Kern County Ghost Towns, I grouped the towns of Garlock, Johannesburg, and Randsburg together and decided to check them out. To get there you have to take the 14 freeway out past Palmdale, Lancaster and Mojave where the Mojave Airport is. Not only is the The Mojave airport a huge storage location for commercial airliners (you can see the parked planes for miles), it is also the home of Scaled Composites, where Paul G. Allen and Burt Rutan launched  SpaceShipOne into the history books as first non-governmental flight to leave the earth's atmosphere. Anyway, north of Mojave on the 14 another 21.5 miles is RedRock Randsburg road. Turn right and travel another 20 or so miles down that road, past the dry lake beds and we come to the first place I visited.

Garlock was only a few buildings. It was fenced off so I couldn't explore any of them. One of the buildings also had 'Rattlesnake Area' displayed on it so I thought it a good idea not to go in.

Further up the road was Johannesburg. The town wasn't actually a ghost town, but you could tell it was an old mining town from the looks of the cemetary and the old King Solomon Mine on the hilltop. There was even a Texaco in town so I was able to get a fill-up and a pepsi. It reminded me of any other desert town like Joshua Tree and 29 Palms. While wandering the cemetary I was spooked to find several Gundersons. I called my mom on the cell phone right there to ask her if she heard of any of them.

Randsburg is a town that looks like it's still trying to keep it's old west heritage. Several of the buildings had false fronts and there were MANY deserted mining camps on the sides of the hills. According to one site there are still people in town trying to get gold out of the mountains.

After Randsburg I started to head back but I found something interesting. Just west of Garlock there was a sign pointing down a dirt road which said "Schmidt tunnel 7 mi". Now I had read about the Burro Schmidt tunnel while reading about Garlock and was a little disappointed that I didn't find it. To summarize: William Henry Schmidt, better known as "Burro" Schmidt, spent 38 years accomplishing the task of hand-drilling a tunnel nearly a half-mile long. This tunnel was so long it actually came out the other side of the mountain. So I wanted to see this tunnel. I drove that Mercury Mystique seven miles over dirt roads, banging my head a few times because I couldn't see thru the dirty windshield and my wipers suck. I saw lots and lots of jackrabbits, lots of bunnies, and one roadrunner. I imagined the wife on the trip and how she would have kept telling me to turn back. I even talked out loud to myself in the tough spots. But I kept on going, yelling back "You got this far, might as well keep going!" And I made it there.

Fortunately, very fortunately, I keep a policeman's flashlight in the trunk for emergencies. I walked into the tunnel and kept going thru the whole thing. It's basically a giant underground T, where you go in and walk up to an intersection. To the left the tunnel gets smaller and dead ends. To the right, you follow it and pop out on the other side where you have this fantastic view.

While in the tunnel I followed a field mouse with the flash light, trying to scoot him out. Didn't work. He's probably still in there or a rattlesnake found him. After that it was another drive back over the dirt roads until I found my way back to the 14. And that was my sunday.