From the Road: Mountains Partly Covered with Sand

I stopped along the way to check out some run-down and decrepit old buildings in the valley near Twentynine Palms (the valley of Dale Lake, a dry lake or playa, sometimes called "Wonder Valley"), and came upon an area where not only were the mountains being choked and overrun by their own alluvium, they were also being buried by pinkish orange sand blowing in from the western Mojave. This is the southern Sheep Hole Mountains near the western approach to Clarks Pass. The pinkish orange color is from the abundance of K-feldspar often pink to pale orange in color) in the sand.