Tripometer – 9900 mi
Gas Gauge – 771.220 gal
Location – Black Rock Canyon Campground, Yucca Valley, CA
Lodging – $30
Cans of OFF – 4
Kelly is pounding out work today trying to get ready for our week vacation with Dave next week. Paul and Stratis spent a fair bit of the day doing laundry and trip planning for the next couple of weeks. Stratis is planning on staying with us for at least a portion of Dave’s visit as he also wants to tour Zion and Bryce canyon over the next few days.
In the early afternoon the call came from the tire dealer who FINALLY found the missing delivery truck full of tires and Stratis was off like a shot. When Kelly finished work, we again drove into Joshua Tree to do a little more sight seeing. The weather today was worse than yesterday, even though we managed to catch a double rainbow on ‘film’. It was actively raining as we drove in the east entrance to the park where we haven’t been yet. Stratis caught up with us at Skull Rock and we got a nice group photo with the help of a local. Due to the rain we ended up driving around to look at the rest of the park from our rain streaked car windows.
The most striking aspect of Joshua Tree N.P. to both of us was the rock formations, the Joshua Tree (again, to us) was more of a park mascot than the main point of the park. The mixture of easily erodible sandstone formations and the harder to erode base layers of volcanic and ancient rock makes for amazing stacks, spires, and shapes against the skyline. This evening on our drive we went through a couple of the other campgrounds in the national park. Two of the campgrounds, unfortunately without enough cell signal for Kelly to use for work, had campsites nestled in amongst huge boulders making for some amazing camping and a very different feel to both the campsites and the campground as a whole (Image above obviously stolen from the internet). When we come back here, and we almost certainly will, we will be sure to book a few nights in one of these campgrounds.
Driving out of the park around dusk all agreed that we were generally disappointed with our time at Joshua Tree. Kelly’s work, Stratis’ tires, Dave’s impending arrival in Las Vegas in a couple of days and the weather all conspired to keep us from experiencing Joshua Tree as we would have liked. Tomorrow we have to move on.
Earlier today the wind picked up rather suddenly in the campground causing us to scramble to put the awning in and catch the myriad of things sailing around the inside of the trailer. Tonight we watched the lightning cast silhouettes of the mountains in the distance from the appreciable valley view that we have from our campsite. We never realized how many mountains there are and how generally hilly the desert is. We now have a much different and greatly improved version of what the desert is all about in our heads. As we fell asleep this evening the gusty wind was rocking the trailer, frankly more than we’re comfortable with considering the hill our trailer is balanced on…
Special Note: Ranger and Cacti. We have an east coast dog. Up until the past week he had no idea what a cactus was. He may have had an interaction with a cactus when we were near Los Angeles earlier this week but at Joshua Tree we have a very large, very prickly, very tenacious, and very painful cactus about 6 feet from the front door of the trailer (Pic above). When we walk him we have to pay extra special attention to where his nose is headed. He runs nose first at plants at a ridiculous speed to assumedly smell for the last dog. He simply has no frame of reference for plants that bite back. We have both seen him nose a cactus and jump back but this doesn’t seem to have had a huge impact on his overall behavior towards plants. Ranger has always ventured off into the bushes to do his business. He rarely if ever goes #2 in less that 2’ of cover. In the desert he really has struggled to find the brush that he thinks he needs to relieve himself. At the end of the day we all know this is going to end in a yelping dog with cactus embedded in his fur, we’re just here to make sure he keeps both of his eyes during the learning process.