Day 28-June 22, 2016-Joshua Tree National Park
Not as hot today-111 in Palm Springs, 99 in the Park
Drove 40 miles to Joshua Tree National Park. Went through an area with high winds and hundreds of wind generators, then over the San Andreas Fault and up rugged rocky mountains spotted with sagebrush through the Morongo Valley to the high desert again. Stopped at Joshua Tree NP Visitor Center and saw a film about the trees and boulders. These trees, which are really yuccas, are very picky about where they grow, they need just enough rain, snow, frost and air conditions and only one insect, the yucca moth, pollenates them so they only grow in the Mojave Desert. They had already bloomed in the spring so we didn’t get to see many flowers but the trees themselves were very different, each one unique, some tall and curly, some short, straight, bent, all different shapes and sizes. The trunks of some of them almost looked hairy and we couldn’t figure out if it was the dead spikes and just the way the bark formed. The park contains two deserts, the Mojave to the west with higher elevations and the Colorado Desert to the east, which has lower elevations and no Joshua trees. The rangers said it’s unusually hot here this year, no kidding. The boulders were more fascinating to me than the trees. They looked like a pile of huge rocks, some with fissures, some rounded, some delicately balanced on others. Some looked like they had been sliced with a knife and they said it had something to do with how they were formed millions of years ago underwater. The granite cooled and crystalized leaving cracks. That’s my geological viewpoint, anyway. I’m sure it’s much more involved than that. About half way we went to Keys View which at 5185’ had a magnificent view of the valley, mountains and San Andreas Fault below. You could also see the smog and pollution from the LA area. They said sometimes even the air in the park is polluted. Drove into Jumbo Rocks campground and ate our lunch. Beautiful campsites among the giant rocks, but only for tents or pop-ups. It’s so hot that there was only one tenter there today but in the winter it’s probably full. We drove over 50 miles in the park from the west entrance at Joshua Tree to the east/north entrance which brought us out to the town of 29 Palms, known for its murals. We got a car wash which was probably a mistake. We had to drive 60 miles back to Palm Springs again through the San Andreas Fault and the wind generators in Desert Hot Springs. There’s a reason the generators are where they are, the wind is fierce and blows the sand all over the road (and the truck). Back at the condo, I went in the pool, we had dinner and Harry went to the RV to try and fix the dining table which is wobbly.