joshua tree national park

After our visit to Saguaro yesterday, we got back in the car and headed west ... a long way west. We crossed the border into California (yay, my first time in California!) and kept right on going for a while. Conveniently (or, you know, by design), we had to pass the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park on the way to our hotel. It was still light outside, so we decided to go in and explore the southern section a little bit.

We had just enough time to head to Cottonwood Spring and follow the trail in a little ways. The fan palms were lush and amazing, and we saw a few flowers starting to bloom, though it's still pretty early for that. We saw a few birds, notably a gorgeous hummingbird, during our exploration.

After Cottonwood Spring, we headed north for a while and admired the low desert, the mountains in the distance, and all the different types of cactuses along the way. We were treated to some amazing colors on the horizon as the sun went down, then we drove out of the park and headed to our hotel in the dark

This morning, we were up before the sun (again) and drove around to the northern part of the park where the iconic Joshua trees live. I had this idea that I really wanted to take sunrise pictures with the trees in them, and I'm more than pleased with how they turned out, even if we got very very chilly in the process.

Max had fun climbing some rocks, then we headed for Keys View, which offered a stunning view of the park from above. We tried to use my camera to take "selfies" by holding down the shutter to just take pictures continuously (I haven't used the timer function, and I didn't have the instruction manual with me, so I thought that would be a decent workaround) with ok results.

Next up was a hike to Barker Dam, which was built around 1900 to hold water for grazing cattle. And once again, the park service proved to be a liar. One-mile round-trip my big bootie! We were out there for HOURS, wandering in the desert. Even Mike and Max got tired. On the plus side, the reservoir was beautiful, and so quiet. For a while, I sat on a rock and thought, this is what absolute silence sounds like. Kind of like the auditory equivalent of when you go to Mammoth Cave and they turn the lights off so you can experience absolute darkness. I'm not sure I've ever been in a place where there were so few ambient noises before. It was kind of amazing.

Also on the plus side, we finally saw some birds! Most of them were too quick for us to get pictures of, but there were a pair of verdins in a bush, and I spent like 15 minutes edging closer to them one step at a time to see if I could get a really good picture. We also managed to get a picture of a loggerhead shrike up in a Joshua tree.

After Barker Dam, we made a quick stop at Skull Rock, which is just what it sounds like. We decided to head for the Oasis of Mara, and along the way, we saw the most glorious thing: a rainbow over the Joshua trees. It was actually a double rainbow, but I'm not sure that translated really well to the pictures.

At the Oasis of Mara, we finally hit the bird-watching jackpot. We saw robins, Costa's hummingbirds, northern mockingbirds, a swainson's hawk, a gilded flicker, a phainopepla (don't ask me to pronounce that; it's the one that looks like a bigger titmouse/smaller cardinal), ravens, and a cactus wren. What a bounty for our grand finale!

The Oasis of Mara was our last stop in the park, and after that we got lunch and headed back to Phoenix (thankfully, only a three-hour drive ... the shortest driving day of this whole trip). It's been a grand adventure, and we've enjoyed seeing all the parks, even if we have entirely missed seeing the cities in the daylight, except for a brief glimpse of Phoenix this afternoon. Maybe someday we'll get to explore the urban environment some more, but in the meantime, this has been a great trip!