Is It Mars, Venus Or The Moon?

The Mojave desert resembles Mars or maybe Venus or the moon. It's a bleak, desolate place of low rocky hills, sun blackened mountains, dry lakes and brown landscapes. I think it also happens to be a great place to do black and white images.

(A weathering pegmatite dyke)

Maybe it's because I associate the desert & West with old black and white TV.

While out rockhounding in the 100+ degree heat yesterday I snapped a few pictures to make this B&W post.

One of the mines I stopped at is an old tungsten mine called The Princess Pat Mine..

It was active during WWII for the tungsten ore. Just to the left of the photo is Edward's AFB. In fact the mountain to the left may be inside Edward's grounds.

The mine appears to have been a gamble that didn't pay off. Lots of holes and left over boulders litter the ore zone. During war, when the government was funding all these mines it probably didn't make a difference to the owner, he still got his government cheese.

Some locals decided to add some color to the bleak surroundings so I left this image as is.

Since it was past noon and really heating up, I decided to move on and check out an old favorite of mine, Mule Canyon, on the outskirts of Barstow, CA.

Mule Canyon is a unique geological place. Ancient mud flats from a nearby lake that baked, subdued, then got twisted and uplifted forming crazy hills full of borate & sodium minerals. That's what the old time miners were after in this hellscape.

When I arrived just after 2pm my car was showing 107deg. It definitely felt that way.

I thought for sure it was going to be cooler in the canyon, but perhaps it was the heat clouding my judgement?

Couldn't let a little hot air stop me though. In addition there was a strong wind, which in normal circumstances would have been nice, but it just felt like a furnace blowing against me, further dehydrating me and drying what little sweat my body could produce.

Layers of gypsum & ulexite lined the landscape.

Remnants of the mines dot the hills.

I played it cool by hiding in the canyon shadows every few minutes. That definitely helped, as well as downing a powerade and 3 bottles of water. I stayed out of the open adits & stopes like this one though, even though cool air flowed out.

One more picture & a rock or two and the sun had won the endurance battle.

I briskly headed out of the twisting canyons with about 30 pounds of colemanite, ulexite & gypsum on my back. This is a ulexite, TV rock, specimen which I'll do a Mineral Mondays on someday.

The sun started going down and as I made my way out of the roasting canyon you could be mistaken for thinking I was driving on Mars.

Thanks for reading!