Here are the Trona Pinnacles. They are basically towers of mud (well, they WERE mud at one time) that formed under water. Which is crazy considering where they now are, the middle of a waterless desert.

We spent a week in the parking lot in front of the Trona Pinnacles because camping was sketchy. If I had had a 4WD truck, I would have camped among the pinnacles themselves, but I didn’t. The issue was not that I needed 4WD to get to a site, it was that the sites were small and I was large. It’s not easy being an RV. This was before I decided I didn’t want to be an RV anymore, but it was on the way to that point.

While at the Trona Pinnacles, I rode my trike all through the pinnacles, then I attempted to reach the “lake” several miles away. I didn’t reach it because it is impassible. The “lake” is really a giant alkali flat that has been mined for various minerals that precipitate out of water (not surface water…the water is pumped from wells). I forget what minerals they are. Stuff like phosphate or boron or some such thing. There are many of them. There is a huge “mine” (processing plant) across the “lake” from the pinnacles. The “lake” itself looks snow-white from a distance, which is as close as I ever got to it. I would have photographed it, but, well, why? It was a sliver of white across the desert plain. It would have looked like nothing. You would have thought I was crazy (why did she photograph a large, dusty flat with a few bits of desert grass among many tire tracks? What was she thinking?)