Traversing the Mojave

Joshua Tree National Park houses some of the most ancient Joshua trees in the world. As a type of yucca and a resident of the Mojave Desert these trees only grow between a quarter inch and four inches a year, depending on its age and the weather. They require 320 days of frost free days, which severely limits their range. So because this remarkable tree is unique of course I had to hug one. The one we picked out was the biggest one we saw in the park, and based on growth rates was approximately 900 years old!!

Our first stop in J. Tree was the split rock

Under whose shade (on the other side) we avoided the 105 degree weather to eat lunch. And I know we all have strange bathroom stories, but I believe this one takes the cake. At least it gives a whole new meaning to the term Honeybucket.

See those dark spots? Those are honey bees. Swarms of honey bees. The first three bathrooms we stopped at all looked like this. Honey bees may be disappearing everywhere else, but they are alive and well in J Tree.

Oh, and Joshua Tree also has some remarkably marvelous rocks for climbing, jutting out of the landscape in great jumbled piles. It’s like God’s gravel truck drove around in random patterns dumping piles of granite and sandstone-like rock. Or, as Rosalie, Eugene, Phillip and I decided: they were like enormous piles of fossilized horse and bird poop.

The years of erosion have created remarkable patterns and textures on the rocks, making them easy to climb and grip with bare hands and feet. There were even a few rocks that had eroded into hand holds like you see on artificial climbing walls. Like the beautiful fifty or so foot rock that had hand holds all the way to the top. So cool! But, word of warning, the eroded granite has lots of tiny sharp edges, leading to a few nice scrapes, cuts, and a sliced open middle finger. Yeah… never fold your other fingers back and suck the blood out of your middle finger, you will realize after a moment that you are flipping off all your friends.

Amongst the rocks we found a shady spot with a tunnel that led down through the jumble of rocks. It was hard for Henrietta and her short little legs to maneuver down through, but a leap into Rosalie’s arms worked out pretty well. On the way down, through and out we found two colossal rocks nearly touching, but held apart by a tiny rock, no larger than my fist. I dubbed it Atlas

And then came the Cholla Gardens. There were randomly scattered Jumping Cholla cacti all throughout the park, but suddenly there were thousands. And then after about a mile, they were back to only a scattered few. Beautiful; and although it was a look-don’t-touch situation Rosalie thought I should hug one.

After the Cholla was the Ocotillo grove where we watched the sunset over Joshua Tree. Because there were no clouds it wasn’t very spectacular, but this is my favorite sunset shot. And on the way home it stayed in the 100s until 10:30 at night.