After leaving the Grand Canyon National Park on Saturday 19 May we drove for about three hours before stopping in Flagstaff to get some supplies and come up with a plan. We had decided to stop somewhere on the way to LA, so we spent the next hour or so looking at options. We eventually decided to spend a night in the Mojave Desert National Park as it was about half-way, and a group of amature astronomers/environmentalists just happened to be having a star-gazing event that night :-) So we grabbed a few things for dinner from Safeway (Monique scored a $5 gift card for answering a survey!) and soon we were on our way.

We arrived at the campsite area just as the sun was about to set. The facilities were very basic - 2 long-drop toilets, gazebo-type thing for shade and a water pump for water - which just added to the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. We went to chat to David, the guy in charge, and he welcomed us warmly, even though we hadn't had a chance to rsvp and we didn't bring anything for the bring-and-share. We set up our tent before it got dark and joined everyone for dinner, which was such a blessing - the food was amazing! Soon it was dark enough for the stars to start comming out and the astronomers began aligning their telescopes. There were about ten people there with pretty big telescopes and they were all so happy to let everyone look through them. We got to learn a whole bunch about the Nothern sky - The Nothern Star, The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, etc. - which we just dont know comming from the South. Although we both think that the the Southern sky is still way better :-) We even got to see a sattelite flare thing. Once we had had enough we walked aprehensively back to our tent and bundled ourselves up for another long, cold night in the desert :-/

Sunday we awoke and were surprised how "warm" it was the previous night - not nearly as cold as Yosemite or The Grand Canyon. We packed up our things into the car and joined everyone at the gazebo for breakfast. They were all having some sort of a commitee meeting which we listened in on - interesting to hear the kinds of issues they're facing in the desert. We finshed off the last of our Cornflakes (they had served us well) and then had some fruit and soup that was on offer. We said our farewells to David and made our way back to the highway and onto the final city of our North American leg - Los Angeles!