We woke up here…
Day Five
Monday, June 3rd, 2019
Joshua Tree National Park
Hidden Valley Campground
I still don’t know how we managed to get this campsite, but it was amazing and even though we had neighbors, they were not close and we didn’t hear a thing all night. We left our tent set up because we were pretty sure we wanted to camp in the same spot again that night, but we had until later in the morning to check out if we happened to find a better campsite in one of the other campgrounds. We added the rainfly to the tent and stashed our sleeping gear in the truck for the day, ate our breakfast, and then set off to explore the park.
Belle Campground
We toured several campgrounds on our drive through the park, one of which was Belle Campground. This is a very small campground compared to Jumbo Rocks that we drove around in the night before and Hidden Valley, where we camped. It appeared to be the campground for rock climbing. We saw several people with climbing gear on top of the rocks. It was such a pretty area, with the rocks, giant yucca plants, and the gold flowers. It was a pretty campground, but not compelling enough to switch campsites.
Cholla Cactus Garden
The Cholla Cactus Garden is located along the Pinto Basin Road in a transition area between the Colorado and Mojave Deserts. The area gets more moisture, which allows more cacti to grow. The cholla are almost as kooky looking as Joshua trees, but shorter…and covered in prickles! The cholla cactus is also known as “jumping” cholla because if you get too close, segments can break off and attach themselves to people or animals. There is a one quarter mile loop trail to take a walk around and look at all of the different shapes and sizes.
This adorable VW camper van was parked at the Cholla Garden with us. The couple rented it for their travels. What a way to travel in style!
When you look out over a sea of cholla cacti, they don’t look very tall, but many of them are taller than Joey, who is over six feet tall.
After we left the Cholla Cactus Garden, we should’ve gone another mile and a half to see the Ocatillo Patch, but I don’t think we could tell how far away it was on the map. We skipped it and went in search of Skull Rock instead.
Skull Rock
The name checks out.
Water has eroded the two large holes in the rock through the millennia, to form what looks like a skull. There was a trail around this area, but the day was warming up so we skipped the walk in the hot sun.
We headed back to the campground, satisfied that there were no other campsites better than the one that we already occupied. I paid for another night and we stopped by the campsite to eat some lunch. I’m pretty sure there were more than a few folks disappointed that we were not there to vacate our site because we saw numerous cars drive by, some of them more than once.
After lunch, we decided it was time for a drive in the air conditioning. We wanted to drive to Palm Springs to have a look around. The drive out of the park toward Joshua Tree, the town, was full of Joshua trees along both sides of the road. We stopped at the visitor center on our way through town and picked up junior ranger books.
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs is an interesting little town. As expected, palm trees lined all of the streets, which was definitely something we don’t see in South Dakota! There are also some interesting mid-century homes in Palm Springs, but we didn’t stop for pictures of those. After a drive around to get the lay of the land, we decided to take a walk around their downtown.
Downtown Palm Springs had a lot of fun little shops. I found a cute print of a rock with some colorful blooming cacti that I thought represented our California experience. Palm Springs is not a cheap town, but it was fun to look around and to say we’ve been there.
The roads in California are…different than anywhere else I’ve driven. They have sort of a combination shoulder and ditch that’s all gravel so it looks really wide and rough. There was a lot of garbage and debris mixed in with the rocks and gravel. A lot of the roads we drove on looked like this along the sides.
We like to call the places with wind turbines, Teletubby Land, after the PBS show, Teletubbies. There’s one wind turbine on the show. We’ve seen a few local wind farms in southwest Minnesota and near Mitchell, South Dakota, but none of those have as many turbines as we saw here! I’d be curious to know where they were made, because South Dakota has a wind turbine manufacturer and one of our technical schools has a program for working on the turbines.
Pie for the People
On our way back to the park, we decided to find one of Megan’s restaurant picks. Pie for the People is located in Yucca Valley, between Palm Springs and Joshua Tree. They had some very unique pizza options, but I don’t remember the name of the one we got. We wanted to try one that said it had strawberries on it, but they said they were out of strawberries that night. Whatever one we chose was tasty!
Sunset Hike
It was still light outside when we got back to our campsite, so we went for a sunset hike. We hiked 2.14 miles, with just 55 feet of elevation gain, starting at 7:35pm. We walked from our campsite around to the other side of the campground to a trail and passed rocks named Chimney Rock, The Old Woman, and The Blob. Not sure who named them, or if any of these photos are of those rocks, but the entire hike was beautiful in the evening light.
I’m not sure which I like more, Joshua trees silhouetted in the evening light or rocks in the evening light. It’s got to be a close tie…but maybe I like the rocks a little bit more.
The trail took us past some Joshua trees, around to an area with big boulders to climb around on. There was no particular trail, so I used the Gaia app to keep an eye on where we were so we could get back to the campground. Eventually, we spotted a tent ahead and then walked through the main part of the campground, back around to our campsite. It was a fun little adventure to end our day!
More Night Photography Fun
We had fun with night photography the night before so we tried again. I’d like to take credit for this fabulous night photo, but the photo credit goes to Megan!
I did not have much luck with my night photos, but I thought these three were kinda neat. The red Joshua tree was an experiment in light painting with Joey’s red flashlight.
The middle one is Joey on the rocks behind our campsite. I’m not sure, but he might be the light source for the photo above. The rest of the rocks don’t look right for that to be the case, but I’m not sure. There’s also a curious green spot in that photo that sort of looks like it’s a small light beam of some kind. I’m pretty sure it’s not a dust artifact. They are usually red and blue squarish dots and this one is more cone shaped. Tap the photo to see for yourself what it might be.
The blurry tent photo has the tiniest bit of the Milky Way showing. I am not sure what the bright spots are, but since they don’t show up in every photo from the night, I will assume they are not giant dust bunnies on the lens. Maybe they are planets or satellites?
Hanging Out in the Tent
Since darkness happens early in southern California in the summer, we had time for hanging out in the tent after our photo session. The kids worked on the junior ranger books we picked up earlier and I studied my maps to figure out where we were going next.
I don’t know why, but I love this very serious photo of Megan with Joey’s sweatshirt on her head. She’s got a pencil in her hand, so I know she was probably hard at work on her junior ranger book. It sort of looks like I am in trouble for taking this photo, but maybe I just caught her contemplating the answer to some Leave No Trace question.
We had a wonderful day exploring the sights of Joshua Tree National Park and Palm Springs. It’s definitely a unique place to visit at least once in a lifetime! We’ll continue exploring the park again in the next episode. Be sure to subscribe to read more of our adventures!
Happy Substack Anniversary to Me!
This post is the one year anniversary of starting this little trip report Substack. When I started it on March 2, 2023, I was never sure if I would keep it up, but I’ve managed to plug away at it for one whole year! I averaged a little better than one every two weeks. This will be post number 29. I’ve completed five road trips and we’re at the halfway point of the sixth trip. It’s been a fun ride down memory lane.