Sawtooth Canyon

From Indio, we knew we wanted to head to Death Valley National Park but needed a place to stay along the route.  Jim had located a free BLM campground south of Barstow, CA called Sawtooth Canyon Campground.  After having some free waffles (available every Thursday morning at the RV resort) we hooked up and headed for some boondocking adventures.

Given the time of year and the secluded location of our chosen stopover, we did not expect to have any difficulty in finding a site.  Well, it turns out that Sawtooth Canyon is a very popular location for rock climbing.  Most of the sites were occupied by small vans and/or tents.  We did find one site that looked like it would accommodate both of our relatively large rigs so we grabbed it while the getting was good.  The first order of business, once we were all set up, was to decide how long we wanted to stay here before moving onto Death Valley.  This discussion went quickly as we all readily agreed to stay for 4 nights and leave for Death Valley on Monday.

We spent the time here relaxing and enjoying the company of our friends with some short walks and hikes thrown in to keep us active.  The weather for Saturday was projected to be a little wet and a little colder so we planned a trip into Barstow to fill the truck, get some groceries and have lunch at Oggi’s Pizza & Brewing Co.  

This BLM campground was an interesting stay.  Watching the rock climbers scale the large rock walls near our campsite was entertaining.  We had found a relatively easy path to get to the top of the big rock formation at our site and joked about telling the climbers that there was an easier way up if they really needed to get to the top.  We climbed it one morning after preparing the drone for flight.  Once we were on top, we yelled down to Corinne to have her turn on the drone.  Dan had carried the controller up in his pocket and used it to launch the drone and have it take some pictures of us as well as perform a circular flyby while filming.  We had a good time here but it was time to move on to bigger and better things.  Death Valley National Park is up next.