Mojave National Preserve

A paved pullout about seven miles north of Highway 40 on Kelbaker Road allows visitors to park their cars and enjoy the view of the Granite Mountains. There is parking for five vehicles at a time. This is a great location to catch a sunset or to have a leisurely tailgate picnic.

Take a day hike on the Kelso Dunes! Enjoy an approximately three mile round-trip trail to the top of cream-colored dunes, formed over millennia by wind and sand. If you're lucky, you might even hear the dunes sing. This hike can be strenuous and hot. Bring water and sunscreen.

Hike the Kelso Dunes

The Rings Loop Trail is a popular 1.5 mile hike that takes you past beautiful scenery and ancient petroglyphs, and up a series of metal rings. This is a moderately difficult hike, and generally flat until the rings climb.

The Teutonia Peak Hike is a great way to examine the aftermath of the Dome Fire up close. The hike is three miles round-trip and takes between 2 and 3 hours for most people.

Come explore underground in a lava tube! Around 27,000 years ago, lava flowed across the surface here. As the red-hot liquid lava stream flowed, its top cooled in the air, blackening and solidifying like a freezing creek in wintertime. The liquid lava beneath continued to flow under the solid surface, which left behind this hollow tube: frozen in time.

Kelso Depot Visitor Center and Museum contains a wealth of information on the human and natural history of the area. Come learn about the plants, animals, and people who have called this area home at some point in history. Rangers are available to answer questions and distribute maps. There is an auditorium featuring a 20 minute film, which is a good introduction to Mojave National Preserve.

The densest concentration of Joshua trees lies along Cima Road. Although about 1/3 of the Preserve's Joshua Trees were burned during the August 2020 Dome Fire, many healthy individuals remain on Cima Road. This makes it a a wonderful spot to observe Joshua trees, icons of the Mojave Desert! Explore by car or foot. We recommend walking the Teutonia Peak trail if you want to get close to Joshua trees impacted by that fire. This area is hot during the summer, so plan ahead.