Al and Dustin's Great Adventure

Well, it might not've been a great adventure but it was definitely great adventuring with my dude.

Al hit me up and said he wanted to do some cold weather camping to try out his future kayak camping set-up, and possibly do some fly-fishing while we're at it. After some research and some back and forth PMs we decided to hit the Kern River then go from there.

We both had to work Friday so we stayed in Delano Friday night. On Saturday morning we hit Wal-Mart for a few last minute supplies then hit 155 East to the Kern River. 155 was a pretty sweet drive and we even hit a few patches of snow. We drove around the East side of the Kern River and checked out a bunch of campsites I had marked on Gaia. Most of them were rather disappointing, but we managed to snag a nice free spot above the river at Chamise Flat Campground.

On Sunday morning, after thawing out, we decided to hit a few of the trails that were in the area. They were all just short trails up the mountains a bit, but they were pretty damn sweet.

Our first stop was under the waterway for the KR3 SCE Power Station for a few photos.

Thanks for sharing your adventure with us RH.

 

 

 

Next few stops were some really cool dispersed campsites.

 

It was getting late in the afternoon and we were both starving so we tried to find somewhere to eat. We were going to eat in Kernville, but we missed a turn and ended up on the East side of Lake Isabella. Al was itchin' to get back home and I was itchin' to do some more exploring while I had the chance so we parted ways; Al heading West on 178 (which is an amazing drive) and me heading East.

I stopped at a burger joint in Inyokern and refueled my truck and my belly, then hit some backroads to a trail that lead into Red Rock Canyon. I made it a few miles down the trail and ended up having to turn around due to some gnarly conditions. It was now almost 4:00PM and I was getting burnt out so I decided to stay at a hotel in Ridgecrest on Sunday night to shower up and rest for Monday.

On Monday morning I planned to jam straight to Red Rock, but I kept passing all these trails along the way and wondering to myself where they go. My desire to explore got the best of me and I ended up heading down some trails I probably had no business being on solo. One of them was Last Chance canyon and it ended up taking me almost two hours to make it 1.5 miles due to continually stopping to check if I could make it the next 50 yards down the trail and having to stop and get out to remove big ass rocks from the trail. After Monday I got real good at driving through narrow passages in reverse. 

 

diggin` this stuff  !

After finally throwing in the towel on Last Chance Canyon it took me a whole 15 minutes to make it back to the freeway following the path I had cleared. You're welcome to the next person who went back there, who happened to be a smokin' hot blond in a Jeep that I passed on the way out. 

I finally made it to Red Rock a little before 2:00PM.