I don’t usually post blogs for a short trip. However, I just spent three nights and two full days in the town of Joshua Tree, California and spent two complete days in the national park. I basically flew down to San Diego from Portland so I can get out of the rain and into the sun. My friend in San Diego and I went over to Joshua Tree. Definitely had sun but also had wind and chilly weather. Joshua Tree turned out to be an amazing experience. I normally like the high desert, but this was exceptional. Because of that I would like to share the pictures that I took. Basically we did a couple of hikes that were about a little over a mile in length and then did some shorter hikes. Had to keep the walks kind of short because of my knees. My knees did hold up remarkably well in spite of the fact that a number of these walks, we literally had to climb up onto rock steps that were quite challenging for me. It was worth all of it. We used the west entrance to the park on both days. The first hike was on the Boy Scout trail. This was an up and back hike that was for about a mile. Here are the pictures from that hike. We mainly saw different varieties of cactus.

At this point, we discovered that we left our lunches back at the house. So we had to go back, eat lunch and then head back into the park. Our next hike was at Hidden Valley. After scrambling up and then down some rock steps, we were able to follow a 1 mile loop to discover a rock-enclosed valley that was once rumored to have been used by cattle rustlers. The rock formations in the valley are just spectacular. They are granite rocks and were formed by volcanic activity. They are susceptible to water making cracks and shaping them.

After this somewhat exhausting hike, we went back to our house. We wound up eating at a Korean restaurant and then soaking in our hot tub. The next day we headed back out through the west entrance and went to Barker Dam. This was another hike where you had to scramble over some rock steps to get to another wonderful mile long loop. There was really something special about this place that I can’t describe. Somebody said it’s similar to what you get in Sedona with those special vortexes. I’m not usually into that woo woo stuff, but I definitely felt something on this hike.

After this hike, we went to split rock to have lunch. Then, after lunch, we explored skull rock and an interesting feature of a face on the side of a cliff.

We then finish the loop and drove out at the north entrance station, which is in Twentynine Palms. We then drove back into the park at the Indian Cove Ranger station. The rocks here were definitely different than in the other part of the park. You could also see the Yucca Valley from this location.

We went back to the house for dinner and decided to venture out and see the park at night. We went to where we did the Hidden Valley hike. Unfortunately there was a full moon so we couldn’t see many stars. I tried to get some pictures which I’ve included, but they’re really not very exciting. What was fun though is that a coyote ran right in front of the car as we were leaving the parking area. Also as we droveback to the house, we got some incredible views of the lights of Yucca Valley.