[AMC-list] more desert Rambling...

[tom jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

Just came back (last night) from another 3 day trip to the Mojave in the 63
Classic wagon. Me and two friends were scouting for a site for an art
project, but we also spent a day at Camp Essex/Camp Clipper. Camped at the
airfield again, visited the pads I missed last time, and visited the
"barracks" area, which is basically some rock outlined tent areas. 500,000
soldiers were trained there in 1943-45, so this was no small campsite... we
found countless middens (trash dump sites) and one buried barrel (empty).
Pretty interesting site, and no locals we talked to even knew it was there.

Itinerary was, Los Angeles to Barstow to Ludlow CA, then old route 66
through Amboy etc to Essex CA, to the Camp Essex Airfield where we camped
for the night. COLD! Next day to Fenner, then Goffs (an old rail town, now
has a museum in the old schoolhouse), then up Lanfair Road to Cedar Canyon
Road, then Black Canyon Road, Essex Road to Camp Clipper where we camped
Sat. night. COLDER! We froze our butts off!  Sunday we took I40 to Kelbaker
Road and up to the to the foot of the Granite Mountains (ingenious name,
that), then back home.

Nearly none of this stuff is on Google Maps, and Essex CA is located wrong
on ALL online maps -- about 200 mi off. It's on BLM maps and Google Earth
though. Essex is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex,_San_Bernardino_County,_California



Here's Goffs. Lanfair Road runs N. from there, the Street View ends when the
pavement ends.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=goffs,ca&sll=34.899448,-115.004883&sspn=1.157841,2.469177&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Goffs,+San+Bernardino,+California&t=h&z=10

The Classic has been shaken down (sic) so many times it's fine out in this
stuff, which is one notch above Jeep trails. Gotta love that torque tube out
here, sealed clean and out of the way! The Sherwood popup camper however I
haven't gone through, so I lost one corner jack, a half dozen screws inside,
almost lost the license plate, etc. This summer I will tear it down and
replace the rotten floors and deal with all that old junk.

Car ran perfectly, except for two momentary ignition farts, spark cut out
for just a fraction of a second. Wasn't the EFI. Damn Duraspark distributor
connections again I'm sure. I'm using crimp connectors because I could not
find any donor harness with good connectors. Connectors always fail, this is
another reason I'm favoring Pertronix conversions over old Durasparks;
they're all 20+ years old now, it's hardly even an "upgrade" anymore.

The car is filled with dirt and dust in and out, since we drove with the
windows down the whole time!


Needless to say the Rambler was the oldest thing out there on the road, by
some decades. Serious double-takes and "what the hell is THAT?". It was also
the only passenger car out in the dirt, never mind a passenger car towing an
antique trailer! It did a lot of work too, three people, 16 gals of water,
many tools (pick axe, shovels, etc), a 90 lb bag of mortar, camping gear,
... the little air-cooled trans never exceeded 160 degrees.

We were quite a spectacle.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.amc-list.com/pipermail/amc-list-amc-list.com/attachments/20100322/0a9a3140/attachment.htm>
_______________________________________________
AMC-list mailing list
AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com