We set alarms at 5:30 this morning in hopes of getting out by 6:00. How aspirational of us! We left town at 7:00. We still stopped and got a shot of the roadrunner statue on the way.
We had to drive past the park and remembered that Bruce didn't get his flat penny. Since the flat penny machine was on the outside of the visitor center, we slid by there and picked one up even though the visitor center was still closed. We didn't see another oryx, though, and I was looking - all the way into Las Cruces, where we picked up the interstate again. There wasn't a whole lot new to see along I-10 except another roadrunner monument. This was the extent of the roadrunners I saw on this trip - in the areas where they are supposed to be!
Bruce drove to just before Tucson to just after Phoenix. My driving part was pretty scenery, but not really much to take pictures. I got some nice shots of the Mojave Desert and some of the oddities on CA-62 between Parker, AZ, and Twenty-nine Palms, CA after Bruce took over again. By the way, there are way more than 29 palms in Twenty-nine Palms.
People use the things around to write their names by the railroad tracks, including old railroad ties.
In the middle of nowhere, there is a collection of shoes.
The landscape of the desert is beautiful, though.
Even with the scattered towers with their solar power.
When we found our hotel, we snacked on bean dip and chips and settled in to bed after a long day driving from Alamagordo, New Mexico, to Yucca Valley, California. We got up early enough to get to the visitor center of Joshua Tree National Park about when they opened. The ranger we spoke with was a lady from Georgia who was very nice and very informative. She gave us the run down and breakdown of how we should be able to accomplish about everything we (read I) wanted to do. We decided we'd start on the far side of the park (through Twenty-nine Palms), go to the cholla cactus garden, then back out the west entrance, home for a nap, and back for sunset and/or night sky. We stopped at Mickey D's for a biscuit first, though. We also learned from the ranger that there are two different deserts here. The Mojave Desert is to the north, and that is what we drove through on our way. The Colorado Desert is to the south. They appear to be separated by the mountains in between them. Even more important, we learned that "Boxed Water is Better." Too bad we had just picked up a new case of water to carry with us.
There was some neat statuary on the way to the park entrance from Twenty-nine Palms.
Then we entered the park and started seeing the Joshua Trees. They can be seen all over the place outside the park, too. And we had seen some cholla cacti even before we got to where the Joshua Trees were! Anyway, the Joshua Tree isn't a tree at all. It has no woody features, instead being fibrous for storing water, kind of like the Baobab Trees in Madagascar. The Baobab and Joshua Trees are not related, though. I have gone down a rabbit hole on the taxonomy of the Joshua Tree. It is a type of yucca plant – the type of yucca plant that is in the Asparagaceae family. Yes, it appears the Joshua Tree is, indeed, related to the asparagus we eat. The Joshua Tree is not, however, related to the Baobab Tree (Malvaceae family) or the yucca plant commonly eaten as a starch, also known as cassava. Cassava is a member of the spurge family and not actually a yucca plant, at all, based on taxonomic classifications. And, while the Joshua Tree may look soft and fluffy in certain parts of its lifespan (early), looks can be very deceiving. Always remember that the Asparagaceae family apparently gets its name from its “sword-shaped” leaves!
A Joshua Tree behind a yucca plant.
We were hoping to see a desert tortoise. Our ranger said they were hit and miss and that they're just now starting to come out of hibernation. They don't come around very often unless they're looking for water, and you should look under your car if it's been parked a bit because they'll come for the dripped condensation from the air conditioning.
An older, gnarled Joshua Tree
A cholla cactus
There are random rock formations throughout the park.
Closeup of a cholla cactus
This is called a bladderpod. It's apparently edible, but bitter.
Bloom on a cholla cactus
A picture from the cholla cactus garden area with some wildflowers in the foreground. These apper to be teddybear cholla.
This area is beautiful and lasts a loooong time. They're working on the actual gardens to make them wheelchair accessible, but the wild gardens outside the manicured area are awesome!
After the Cholla Cactus Garden, we started heading back toward the east gate of the park. We saw lots of wildflowers, some interspersed with branchy bushes.
We spent some time at Skull Rock
I'm very small compared to Skull Rock!
A very spiny and gnarled Joshua Tree. This was not a comfy lean!
The Kingcup Cactus all by itself
And a closeup of his majesty
Oyster Bay. You can see how the ones on the left look like open bivalves.
This was a pretty dense grove of Joshua Trees. There were many of these in and out of the park.
We went to Keys View, where we saw the San Andreas fault line. It faulted yesterday at just over a 5, but that quake was close to the ground and was definitely felt. Aftershocks are expected. The ranger said to not be afraid if we get an aftershock. We told her about being in the Ecuador earthquake, and that fear is a likely response if we feel the ground shake.
The Joshua Tree also blooms. Apparently, they begin blooming (when they bloom) in mid-February, and the blooms tend to be gone by the end of April. We did, in fact, see some blooms. The cars behind us weren't necessarily happy about that, but hey! I wanted some pictures, and Bruce accommodated that as much as he felt he could. We turned around A LOT! I'm not sure what order they go in, but I got shots of various stages of bloom.
Obviousy, this one is after the blooming is over and there is just these empty spikes.
On the way out of the park, we stopped for the hike I wanted to do - the Hidden Valley Trail. This is considered an easy hike, a one-mile loop with little elevation. The problem is that it's that little elevation many times, and it's rocky and uneven. I really should have used my walking stick. Along the way, I did meet a family who were helping their 90-year-old almost blind grandmother to do the trail because she wanted to do it. Except for her (since she couldn't see) and the family members that were helping her (obviously concentrating on her), I really couldn't understand all of the people that just blew past the lovely flora and fauna that were along this trail. From the pinyon pines the various cacti and wildflowers, joshua trees, blooming yucca, and the rock formations that had climbers going up to the animals, it's a beautiful and very interesting trail with explanatory signs along the way.
This is the entrance of the trail. You had to walk through the right side of that rock formation, through that little shadow.
A beautiful look at part of the rocky edge of the trail
This is either Costa Hummingbird or Anna's Hummingbird. Running them through a Google image search, two of them came back Costa and one Anna's. They are the same bird. I spent a lot of time watching him flit around. Several people went around me, not at all interested in seeing the bird.
Probably a chuckwalla, but I'm not sure
Parry's nolina, a type of yucca plant. They used to cook and eat the bloom.
Another Kingcup Cactus
Probably some type of milkweed
Rattlesnake weed
Probably a Coachella pocket gopher. Can't really tell for sure because he kept going back down into his hole when people walked by. Nobody was interested in seeing him, even when I pointed him out.
Another chuckwalla
Great Basin fence lizard
Black-throated sparrow
It was an awesome hike. Bruce hung out in the car reading his book and commented about how it took me about three times as long as most everybody else to do the hike. He wasn't concerned. He figured I was watching animals, taking pictures, and/or resting and talking to people. He was right on all counts!
After finishing the park, we came back to Yucca Valley and the Black Bear Diner and split a salad and sandwich that were way too large to finish, so we brought the leftovers back to the hotel. Bruce took a nap, and I dumped pictures and did some emails, etc, before going back for sunset and dark skies.
We went back to the park for sunset. I decided I had good looks for both sunset and dark skies from the Quail Springs picnic area. So, I set up the tripod and waited for sunset. I took some shots, but with no clouds in the upper sky, sunset wasn't terribly interesting. I did the best I could walking over to where I could see the lower sky. When it started getting dark, some dude turned his kids loose with flashlights. After a while, I asked them nicely (and I WAS nice) to not shine bright lights over my way. They had blue lights, but one kid was playing with the white light. A little later, they all went into the car, and the dude turned on the headlights. He had already been asked. He was just sitting there with his headlights on. Pointed right at me. Bruce decided to do something about it. I got out so I could be by the tripod and camera, and Bruce turned on our car, positioned it so he was pointing at them, and turned on his running lights. They turned on their brights. Bruce turned on Red's brights. They finally turned off their lights. Bruce turned his off, and came back to our parking spot. Ultimately, they left.
I got a couple of decent shots of sunset
and the night sky
We went back to the hotel and slept till we woke. It was just a short drive to Death Valley, so we didn't set an alarm. When we woke up, we got packed up, ran Big Red through a car wash, and headed down Old Woman Springs Road.
Finally, we ended up in Lone Pine, California, and our hotel (like most of the buildings in the town) was right in front of Mt. Whitney! Mt. Whitney is the highest point in the US, beating out Pike's Peak by 390 feet. When I start seriously training to see the snow leopards, maybe I should hike both Mt. Whitney and Pike's Peak!
