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Adventuring in the California Desert, Completely Revised and Updated | 
 enlarge | Author: Lynne Foster
Publisher: Sierra Club Books
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $0.82
You Save: $18.13 (96%)
New (18) Used (23) from $0.82
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 1359806
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 518
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0871563940
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.94045309154
EAN: 9780871563941
ASIN: 0871563940
Publication Date: October 28, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ex-Library Book;Creased Cover;sticker on side and back of cover Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
It's big (100 miles wide by 240 miles long), it's diverse (granite peaks, extinct volcanoes, sand dunes, and more than 2,000 species of plants and 500 animals), and it makes for a wonderful, inexpensive vacation. The California desert offers bird watching and backpacking, high alpine snow fields and dry salt plains, and when the rains are adequate, miles of wildflowers that take your breath away. Lynne Foster's guide makes it accessible, with desert safety tips, maps, information about public campgrounds, historical sites, and desert museums, as well as useful information such as where to get food, water, and gas. From the White-Inyo Mountains, through Death Valley, Palm Springs, and Joshua Tree National Park, down to the Mexican border, the desert awaits, sere and stark, but not at all barren.
Product Description
Providing detailed information and advice on outdoor activities ranging from backpacking and rock climbing to exploring pioneer and Native American sites, this popular guidebook shows readers how to enjoy the vast California desert to the fullest without harming its fragile ecology. Author Lynne Foster also covers the natural, geologic, and human history of the region, and offers tips on desert safety and survival, weather conditions, clothing, and equipment.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good for armchair reader, useless for actual visit January 15, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I wonder if Lynne has ever actually been there. The author spends half a paragraph asking numerous questions you'd like to ask, give you a short answer you can find with park brochure, then refer you to the visitor center to get more information and get map (apparently the author has been to and is familiar with the visitor center). No detail info on any of the trails and tours. I've been to the desert once or twice and I know more about the subject than the author describes in the book.
I am also extremely disappointed with Sierra Club Travel Guide. Next time I won't buy their books blindly.
maps are terrible, information on hiking/wilderness is poor November 19, 2002
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Don't buy this if you just want a hiking/camping guide. Here's why:
* The author himself mentions that 50% of the book isn't really related to hiking ("adventuring" as in the book's title)
* The hikes are not described well. There are no total trail distances given.
* There are no maps of trails/trailheads/wilderness areas, and that's what REALLY bugs me. There are virtually no maps in this book. The maps that are there are VERY pitiful. Without maps, this book is virtually useless to me.I would recommend that you look around at other books available if you're after a good hiking guide. Since the average rating is currently at 4.5 I'm gonna give this a 1 to try to add some balance to things...
 desert california in one volume January 19, 2000
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Updated since I bought my 1987 edition this book is a wonderful one-volume introduction to California's desert regions. My battered, coffee-stained, spine-broken copy is the best testimony to its usefulness I can give. The overlong introductory section cuts down on space for regional descriptions but the advice is worth reading, especially the section on safety. Very strong on regions ouside the well-known parks the author encourages visitors to explore and hike on their own. The book is a well-rounded blend of information on flora, fauna, geology, history, hiking and 4WD touring. If you are new to desert exploration this book will break you in easily and safely.
 Very useful guide that's fun to read. May 22, 1998
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Lynne Foster has done a great job here, describing many trips and day visits into nearly every corner of California's beautiful deserts. Nearly every region I am familiar with, she has covered quite well. Most people don't know the lonely horizons and vast silences awaiting those who get off the superhighways; the land is incredibly beautiful and not a little dangerous. Heed her words of caution, then take the book and your camera and see for yourself. Makes great armchair reading, too!
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