Carey’s Castle
Given that it was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we decided to pick a hike that would take us away from the regular crowds that tend to rush the parks over holiday weekends. The perfect candidate was Carey’s Castle, a backcountry homestead in the south end of the park.
This Carey guy built himself a cabin right into the side of one of the piles of rocks that are so common in the park, and visiting the ruins is a bit of an adventure that takes some pre-planning. First, one must figure out the coordinates – doable with a bit of googling and map study (note: the waypoint for this photo album on my PhotoMap is an approximate place to leave your vehicle, but you’re still a ways from the castle!) Then, one must figure out the best route to approach it – topo skills and GPS skills help. Lastly, one must actually hike it and find the darn thing – which is actually easy if you do parts one and two correctly. Mess up parts one and two and you could be wandering dead end canyons for a few days. The hike was about nine miles round trip through a canyon in which there was occasional boulder hopping (fun!), and with a solid map and GPS route we were able to get there and find the ‘castle’ quickly. The footprints helped, but people going the wrong way make footprints too, so we couldn’t trust them too much.
We took the long drive back to Twentynine Palms around the east side of the park. I picked up some geocaches and we grabbed ourselves a $5 Little Caesars special before heading back to the hotel in time for the US Men’s Soccer World Cup prep game. In the evening we drove over to the east side visitor center and wandered the Oasis of Mara. Around sunset the bunnies and birds were out in droves so we had a few wildlife sightings to top off the day.
Any tips to the trail head????????? Thanks
South East Joshua Tree. 🙂 The mine is on a map, and locating the closest entry isn’t too difficult from there.
Or, if you search the web, GPS coords aren’t too difficult to find.