3 strikes and SoCal is out
all in the space of two weeks, mind you
strike one
Joshua Tree North BLM area - obnoxious off-roaders cut through camps in day time at high speed, and one night began idiotic donut riding, jumping, and slinging roost at 10pm. Began.
Also in 29 Palm (the nearest town) there were junkies wandering in the streets like zombie extras from the Walking Dead. There was one dude in a wheelchair sitting in a right turn lane of a dark street at night. In a lane of traffic.
strike two
I got seriously stuck in sugar sand leaving Camp Cady Wildlife Area outside Barstow, CA. I was leaving because Cady was such a cluster. Don’t get me started on the camp or the Barstow area in general.
Anyhow, I was tooling along a dirt/sand road when it suddenly got very deep; I sank the van to the body trying to get out. Took a few hours of digging and finagling to extricate myself. In retrospect I was not the first; there were many extraction-related debris around: boards, bricks, etc, which I used to good effect.
About an hour before I got out, a red pickup pulled up about 100’ up the road, watched a bit, then went around me using some parallel roads about 150’ away. WTF? He gunned his engine, slammed it into gear and sprayed roost at each junction.
strike three
from a review I left about Horse Thief Camp on FreeRoam:
Since I camp and hike alone, I usually have a rule where I require at least one bar of service on either my V, ATT, or Tmo devices. Zero bars here. I made an exception due to the remoteness, quiet, and vault toilet across the way. Friday and Saturday were great. Dog and I did lots of walking and I did a good bit of reading. Woke up Sunday morning around 7am and took the dog out. I heard a loud noise fairly close by. Turns out a California-plated import SUV was spinning around on the gravel campground paths and blasted by my campsite at high speed flyby (50mph? 60mph) on gravel. As he passed by, the driver screamed at me that I was a "f*king f*ggot", a "f*cking *sshole", and other things I couldn't make due to the engine and gravel noise. I was standing there with my dog on the leash wondering what was happening. Hadn't even made coffee yet. As he pulled back onto Empire Mining road he was still screaming ; all I could pick out was that I should "get the f*ck out of here". He blasted south on the pavement, then reentered the camp loop for another high speed flyby. He threatened that I should leave before he comes back, and left northbound on Empire this time. Or so I thought. Around 7:30am I noticed a light colored spot in the distance; he had pulled off the road about 200yds away and eased up far enough he could just see over the rocks to view my campsite. I know this because I used binos (I'd been looking for mountain goats the day before) to check the spot and the roofline of his SUV was just visible. At some point he left that spot and drove at normal human speeds southbound on Empire again. He yelled something one last time but was too far away to be understood. He had left southbound, which was my exit route. I have a pic of his roof sticking out of the hiding spot, and video of his final departure. Both are from about 200yds away and not of great quality. My van was pulled in straight; if I'd backed in my dashcam would have recorded it. I had planned to stay for 3 more days but being solo with no cell signal it didn't seem wise - I'd have to sleep at some point. It also seemed unwise to attempt to leave at that time, in case he was waiting with the road blocked further down. I made breakfast, did my daily housekeeping and finally departed around noon. I hoped that by that time he would be gone, no longer high/psychotic, or something. It's a bit weird, right? Who drives 20mi out in the middle of nowhere at 7am and harrasses someone who is lawfully camping? I think the reason I've never seen this happen in TX is Texans know it would be an **_excellent_** way to get shot. This is the third obnoxious experience I've had in CA in the past two weeks. I am writing this review from NV and don't think I'll be spending any more of my retirement $$$ in CA.
analysis
My libertarian instinct is that living in a nanny state incentivizes people to outsource their human concern to the govt, making them self-centered shitbags. <– technical term
This is the cautionary inverse of the observation that “an armed society is a polite society.”