USA 2005

Tuesday 26th July 2005 - Joshua Tree National Park

Left L.A at about 7:30 and drove to the Joshua Tree National Park, taking route 10 and route 62, entering the park at the western entrance. We'd heard something about part of the park being closed on the radio.... but were not sure exactly what the issue was. When we arrived we found out that there had been serious flash floods and part of the park was closed, one of the main interstate freeways that runs by the north of the park (our intended route out!) was closed.... and only one campsite was open! In fact it turned out that one site was fully open (Hidden Valley) and the site we'd hoped to stay at had about 20 pitches available out of the usual 120. This was Jumbo Rocks and we stayed here. The park is beautiful and very colourful. We went on a hike around Barkers Dam, a man made dam constructed in the late 1940s by cattlemen. The walk was brilliant and we saw lots of wildlife, fauna and flora, as well as excellent views of strangely shaped rocks. Amongst the wildlife we saw were:

Lizards, a snake, stink bugs, squirrel things, some bird of prey, a rabbity thing right up close, ducks. No coyotes or roadrunners though.

After the hike, we drove up to Keys View, an elevated point at about 5100 feet above sea level. We then went back to our camp. We spent some time exploring the area nearby and broke out the trangias to make coffee. Part way through our coffee, loads of rangers arrived, together with a "search and rescue" team. It turned out that a teenage boy had got himself stuck up one of the larger rocks and needed help getting down.

About this time, we started to hear thunder and it started to rain a bit. The drops were very large but the frequency was low. A ranger came up to our pitch and told us he'd received a flash flood warning from elsewhere in the park and the we should consider moving! We asked him about the risks. He pointed out that the floods of previous days had resulted in most of Jumbo Rocks being closed and most other campsites being completely closed, large sections of road had been washed away and quite large rocks had been found washed into the road! Errrrr..... OK then, we'll stay! We talked to the few other campers and they had decided to stay as well. The risk was deemed to exist only for about an hour and by 6:30 we knew we were safe. Phew!

Martin cooked us a meal of yummy vege sausages on the trangia. After dinner we played ball and then went to do some more exploration of the local area. And then played games at our picnic table.

When it started to get dark Martin lit a campfire using wood that he and Jack had scavenged from the fire pits in unoccupied pitches, and we settled down to do some star gazing. As it got darker we saw more and more stars. Impressively there were stars right down to the horizon, which is something we never see in the UK.

Click on the photos for full size versions

En route to Joshua Tree NP, we passed through an area that had a really impressive wind farm....

On arrival at the park, we started we became our standard routine, and stopped at the Visitor Centre for information, souvenirs and in this case water. Generally you have to take your own supply of water into this park and certainly, where we were intending to camp, there was no running water at all. We also had very nice frappacinos at the centre's cafe.

The part of the park we were in was in the Mojave Desert. The drive in towards where we would camp, gave us our first view from the car of the famous Joshua Trees themselves and the strange rcok formations.