“It’s alive and waiting for you. Ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, or the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill”
The Mojave is a desert of wind, temperature extremes, Joshua Trees and solitude. When most people hear the word ‘desert,’ images of tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and bleak desolation typically come to mind. In reality, the Mojave is anything but a wasteland. Amongst the sand and sagebrush lie many places of beauty and wonder, and of historic importance. Some are the result of time and the elements, some are the result of man and his efforts to live in the Mojave, both in recent and prehistoric times. Let’s go see what we can find.
Even with my old eyes, I can still see interesting things way off the highway, while speeding by at 70-80 mph. Such was the case on Nevada State Route 266 near Lida, Nevada. I was heading east toward I-95 when I caught a glimpse of something unusual several hundred yards south of the highway. My gold mine senses were tingling, so I turned around as soon as I could and headed back to see what I could find.
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The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, aka "Goldstone Observatory," is the largest tracking station in the Deep Space Network, which is comprised of three installations around the world. As part of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, Goldstone is used primarily to communicate with deep space probes and satellites, and to study asteroids. The network can communicate and track multiple spacecraft within the solar system 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The Goldstone complex consists of nine separate sites, spread out over 33,000 acres in a remote region of California's Mojave Desert.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
