Spring Fling 2010

The kind folks over at PanamintValley.com have a yearly get-together every year. It's called Spring Fling. It's great fun. This years Fling was planned for April 9th-11th.

I decided to drag the family out to the Panamint Valley a full week in advance and spend some time relaxing before all the fun started. We arrived in Ballarat on April 2nd.

This trip report will be split between two pages.

Day one (Friday) started with the drive out and setup of camp in Ballarat. Pretty quiet and uneventful.

My little Brother, Jonathan just returned from an eight month Navy deployment and was able to do some exploring with me before heading back home on Monday morning. It was good to get to hang out in the Desert with Bro Bro.

Day two (Saturday) included a stop with the Newman clan in Goler Wash and a trip to Warm Springs Via butte Valley.

Day three (Sunday) found us up in a canyon checking out where I had a feeling there were some old mines. I dragged the Wife and kids up the side of the mountain but once we reached the ridge, they realized that they wanted nothing to do we the hike and went back to the Cruiser to wait for Jon and I to return later.

Day five (Tuesday) we farted around a bit. Doug drove with us into Ridgecrest where we barged into Rubiblue's house while the Brickers were there working on the Jeep. We then made a Wallmart and Wiener Schnitzel stop before hooking up with Desert Mouse for a few minutes. We had a great dinner on the PSR porch that night. No pics on this day

Day six(Wednesday) My Brotha from anotha, Clark, aka thefreqofnature met up with us this morning. We had breakfast on the front porch of PSR and then we all (Clark with Doug and my family) drove out to Ballarat to meet up with a few more folks.

David and Noah Bricker along with Jim (Rudiblue) and Charlie (Jim's friend) were already there waiting for us. We contacted "Wildbill" Gossett on the CB and he would be catching up with us shortly. We loaded back into the 4x4's and proceeded up into the Panamint Mountains.

Bill's been cleaning up an old mining camp. Last month a few of us put together a work party to clean out some of the trash in the buildings there. Today, we would continue off where we had stopped. We loaded two trailers and the back of Bill's truck with junk. The place is looking good and is almost ready for campers to begin using.