Joshua Tree National Park
This week was our biggest adventure yet! Mitchell got the day off for Thanksgiving and the Friday after, so we had a really long weekend to make the most of and decided to go and visit Joshua Tree National Park. Unlike our other trips, this was in the desert rather than the mountains and we stayed in a little caravan rather than a tent.
Joshua Tree, like most places, is only a little over an hour away from us, so we could definitely go for a day trip if we wanted to visit again. Even though it's so close, we still made a stop on the way. About half an hour away by the town of Cabazon, there's a roadside attraction called the Cabazon Dinosaurs! These are two giant dinosaur statues which are repainted regularly with the seasons. We saw the Santa Claus T-rex and a diplodicous with a necktie. There was also a whole visitor centre, but we didn't stop inside to see the extra bits.
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| Spot the Emily! |
It was fun, but it was so windy that day! It was very cold and we didn't stay long for pictures, we wanted to get back inside the warm car. I could feel the wind on the car as we drove, especially as we crossed the open plains on the way to the desert.
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| Heckin wind |
Our first stop when we reached Joshua Tree (the town) was the visitor centre. They had a little exhibit about the plants and wildlife you could expect to see on your visit and I picked up a map. Apparently, the Joshua trees, which the park is named for, originally had their seeds spread by giant sloths. Now that these creatures are extinct, it's harder for them to spread and they're contained in just this one region. If something were to happen, like a fire or tree disease, we could lose all of the Joshua trees!
As we couldn't check into our caravan until later in the afternoon, we decided to head into the park itself. As it was Thanksgiving, we thought it would probably be the quietest day of the weekend to visit, so we went to one of the more popular spots, hoping it wouldn't be too busy. We parked at the Hidden Valley picnic area and walked a little way down a trail before stopping for lunch. This was our first glimpse of the Joshua Trees, and other cacti, up close; they are very weird looking trees! Very long tunks with branches pointing straight upwards and bushes of spiky leaves on top.
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| Stopped for lunch |
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| Joshua Trees |
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| Just a very small pile of rocks |
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| Hiding cows inbetween the rocks |
The next place we went to was Keys View. This spot is also very popular as you can see the San Gabriel Valley and Palm Springs from up there, if you know where to look. We could definitely see for miles, although it was exceptionally windy up there and very cold. Even though it was only about 3pm we had to put on our woolly hats and struggled to take photos as it felt like the phone would be ripped from our hand at any moment! This was obviously a very popular place to watch the sunset, as although we'd been able to get a parking space without any problems, as we left there was a giant queue along the road.
We thought about staying longer to watch the sunset, but there was over an hour to wait and it was so cold! On the way back, the setting sun was so pretty over the golden sand and trees, I had to stop at another car park, just to take some pictures in the evening light.
We called it a (very sucessful) day, left the park and went to check in at our Airbnb. The host had sent us a hand drawn map along with the directions and we followed this along the dirt road to their property. Google maps wanted to take us just across a sandy field without much of a road, so we're very glad she sent us the help. It was a little vintage caravan and very cute. It was so nice to have running water, a fridge and a heater. We made ourselves a lazy Thanksgiving dinner of mac and cheese, followed by pumpkin pie and hot chocolate.
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| Our home for the weekend |
The next morning we were up early (despite Mitchell's protests) and straight back into the park. This time we drove to the Boy Scout trailhead, ready for a long hike. It started in the Joshua Tree forest (which is a weird name for it as it's not very foresty at all) and we got to see trees of all shapes and sizes. After about an hour, the scenery changed and we entered an area which looked straight out of a space movie. Huge rocks sprung from the ground on all sides, some were giant boulders, but some had broken up and been eroded away by the wind so that they ended up looking like someone had poured a giant pile of rocks onto the ground. I climbed onto a few of the smaller ones, but they were just so massive, I couldn't even make a start on most.
The end of the trail was a spot called Willow Hole, which when we arrived, we realised it was called that because out here, in the middle of the desert, filled only with cacti and sand, was a willow tree!
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| A little oasis in the desert |
The trail had been pretty empty on the way out, but as we approached the beginning of the trail, there were a lot more people on their way in and it was starting to get pretty warm. Our next stop was the Lost Horse Mine trail. The car park for this was all the way down quite a long dirt track. Our car is pretty good, but we were taking it slowly along here and at one point had to pull over to let the ranger pass in their big 4x4 truck. Even though it seemed like quite an isolated trail, we got the last parking spot and the small car park was full of people walking around.
We started walking and stopped for lunch under a bush which seemed like it would be the only spot of shade for a while. This trail was steeper than the ones we'd done so far, but wasn't too bad. The midpoint of the trail was an actual mine, built in the 1800s to find gold. It's called Lost Horse Mine, because the person who found the gold in this hill, found it when he was looking for his lost horse. The mine was fenced off to protect it from visitors, but we could get really close and see the pumps and mine shaft. There was an excellent view from up there too.
From this point, we could either walk the two miles back the way we came, or go four miles and continue the loop to the end point. We worked out how long it had taken us and how long it was until sunset, and found we could manage the longer route. I'm glad we did, as a little further along we got to a viewpoint where you could see for miles and miles and all there was was flat desert with the occasional mountain sticking up through it. It really did feel like the wild west and we were about to see cowboys ride past at any moment. There wasn't much to see on the rest of that half of the trail, but it was worth it for that view.
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| Am I about to witness a cattle round-up? |
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| Just a weird tree |
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| Nearly there! |
As the sun started to set on that day, we felt it get colder and kept up a quick pace to be able to make it back to the car before it got too cold and dark. As we exited the park on Friday, there was a bit of a queue to get out, as they check your passes, but there was also a queue to get in! We think people were coming in to get a good sunset view or to set up for stargazing. Joshua Tree National Park is a dedicated dark sky zone. It's so vast and so far from the cities and their light pollution, you can get a really good view of the stars. We did a little bit of stargazing after dinner and were joined by the Airbnb host's dogs (I think they were more interested in our dinner than the stars though).
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| Very friendly |
Saturday morning we were up early again and heading back to the park. This time, we took another entrance as we were headed to the other side and the main entrance promised to be very busy. After yesterday, we were still a little tired and didn't feel like going for any long hikes, so we had a few short ones planned instead. Our first stop was the cholla cactus garden. For some reason, this specific area of the park is populated almost exclusively by cholla cacti. All you can see around you is this plant, and it's very distinctive. There were very clear trails marked out with barriers built up as this cactus is very aggressive. If you touch it, it will bounce off and attach itself to you, quickly followed by more spikes and if you try and get it off, it will just bounce onto another part of your body. This didn't sound fun, so we stayed well away, but got some great pictures. Even though we only spent about 20 minutes at this weird site, it was one of our favourites.
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| The hills are alive with the sound of DANGER |
The next stop was a rocky area known for its famous arch rock. This was a very family friendly trail and by the time we left it was getting very busy. We walked along a flat trail and then hopped over some rocks to try and find this famous rock. We found it, but were a little underwhelmed, especially considering how many people had come to find it.
We decided to stay a bit longer and explore the rest of the area too. It was a lot of fun scrambling over the rocks and finding ways over to the next section. When we got a bit further out we found a rock shaped like a heart, and of course we had to get a picture in front of that one! We stopped for a snack and then headed back to the car to find our next adventure.
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| Heart rock <3 |
We'd been thinking about going to see Skull Rock, a rock that had been eroded to form the shape of a skull, but based on how busy the Arch Rock car park now was, we thought it might be hard to find a spot. We had a look at the map and saw that a trail which started at the nearby Split Rock connected up to the Skull Rock, so we decided to park there instead. This proved to be a good idea as there was plenty of parking to be had, the only issue was when we tried to go to the bathroom there, but couldn't get close because of all the bees flying around and trying to get through the door! We had to hold it, as there was no way of getting through that many bees.
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| Skull rock! |
We walked along a really nice trail which was mainly populated with climbers who were attempting to scale some of the giant rocks protruding from the ground. We connected up with the discovery trail, where information posts had been dotted about which explained the geology of the area. We reached the famous Skull Rock, and like Arch Rock it was covered in people trying to get a photo. I snapped a quick picture, but we didn't stay long. There are so many other interesting shaped rocks to see on the trails, with no-one in sight because they don't have their own signs. We walked a bit further away and found some shade behind a big rock for lunch. Re-fuelled, we continued the loop which took us through one of the campgrounds where we could find another toilet block (minus the bees).
We followed this trail which took us on alternate routes to get back to where we started. We finished up about the same time as the day before, but it was so much warmer! The sky was clearer too and as we watched for stars that night, we could just about see the milky way across the sky.
Sunday was our last day and as we weren't in a rush, we asked the host if we could visit their animals. They had two horses, a minature horse and two nubian goats which were lovely and friendly.
Our final place to visit for the weekend was Pioneertown! This is a town that was made for filming westerns in the 1930s, but isn't much used any more. They have a couple of restaurants and shops filled with cowboy boots and gifts and on some Sundays (not the one we were there) they have an outdoor theatre where they perform a shoot-out play. It was fun to see, but it's not a big town so we didn't stay for long.
Final thoughts on Joshua Tree National Park:- it's so cool that this is so close to us and so different from everything else we've visited! I think I still prefer the forest, but this was still amazing to experience and pretend you're really out in the wild west. It was weird to drive to all the different places within the same park, but it's so vast and most of it is just more trees for as far as you can see, so it makes sense to go directly to the more interesting parts. It's very dry there, we went through a lot of lip balm and moisturiser and my legs are still so dry. The only wildlife we saw was a desert ground squirrel, some poop and a jackrabbit burrow, and maybe a prarie falcon.
Hope you enjoyed hearing about our trip and want to join us on the next one!
Lots of love,
Emily and Mitchell
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