Joshua Tree National Park

We grabbed a first come first served camping spot at Joshua Tree National Park, in the Cottonwood campground. The campground is near the cottonwood spring, which is an oasis with massive palm trees! It’s very strange to see such large plants in the middle of the desert at this point.

Joshua Trees are only present in the northern (Mojave desert) portion of the park. Since we camped near the south entrance, we drove from our campground up through the park most days. We still haven’t adjusted to daylight savings time, so this meant a lot of night driving. Also, Joshua trees aren’t actually trees, they’re a type of yucca. Like palm trees, they’re closer to a grass.

We hiked the Panoramic Loop up to a beautiful view.

We’re starting to get decent at identifying many of the desert plants we see, but had to ask the nature center to identify this one. Turns out it’s a dried out wild cucumber. Huh, who knew (they did).

There are seemingly endless ‘exhibitions’ and small nature trails along the few roads in Joshua Tree. We especially enjoyed the Hidden Valley and Cholla Cactus nature trails. Cholla Cactus have barbed needles and will attach themselves to you as a way of propagating. We were careful to avoid getting too close.

Hiking through sand really takes it out of you, so we called it a day one afternoon and just hung out playing backgammon at our campsite. We were asleep by 7:30pm because we wanted to wake up and watch the Leonid meteor shower at 2am. Andy mostly slept through it, but Priscilla caught a few shooting stars!

Highlights of Joshua Tree National Park

• Panoramic Loop trail
• Hidden Valley nature trail
• Cholla Cactus nature trail
• Desert camping – it’s pretty comfortable and easy

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