I spent most of this morning in the Lowe’s parking lot reinforcing the broken bike rack strut.  I’m glad I brought my angle grinder and all the other tools that made the fix possible!

On our way east, we passed the massive windmill field west of Palm Springs:

We got off the freeway at sunset and settled in to a lovely patch of BLM land just south of Joshua Tree National Park.  Trish said “Try to get WiFi”, which of course is ridiculous since we’re in the middle of nowhere.  Imagine my surprise when we pulled in WiFi from almost 5 miles away!  See the distance field below:

I confirmed the distance using Google Maps:

It’s a somewhat academic victory since the bandwidth is so minimal that it’s pretty much useless, especially since I’m getting 3 Mbps on 4G, but still, it’s amazing that I can connect to a Wireless Access Point that’s 2 hours away on foot!

Celebrate this achievement by revisiting the WiFi antenna deployment video, won’t you?

Despite it being dark when we got here, it was only 6pm and the moon was up, so we decided to sit outside and chat as the night cooled, and then go for a moonlit walk.  Trish and I are both thrilled to be back in the middle of nowhere.  In the distance, we can see the nocturnal denizens of the interstate plod along.  It’s quiet here, and the air is crisp and clean.

  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.