Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park - words to describe it?  Surreal, probably, is the first one that comes to mind.  Varied.  Unique.  Seemingly barren, yet teeming with life.  Vast.  Expansive.  Thirst-creating (we went through about 3l of water each today - Karl asked why his wees was white this evening!).

JTNP comprises 794,000 acres, covers two deserts (Mojave in the north and Colorado in the South) and a transition zone between the two, was used by American Indians, cattle ranchers, miners, and now, by rock climbers and nature enthusiasts.

We were in the Park for 7.5hrs today, and another 30 mins at the Oasis Visitor Centre in TwentyNine Palms on our way out.  We saw wildlife (a number of lizards, rather large ants (including red ants), butterflies, birds, a ground squirrel, even a Sonoran Gopher snake!).  We saw a huge variety of cacti and trees and shrubs, including, but not limited to, the Joshua Tree, the California Fan Palm, creosote bush (its roots can go down 60ft in search of water, and it drops its small wax-coated leaves as drought conditions linger, then grows new ones once it rains again), a number of cholla cacti (pronounced choy-ya, and whose barbs can cause considerable pain when trying to remove them), chia, occotilla (the tall spindly plant with red flowers in yesterday's blog), beavertail pricklypear, juniper, Mojave yucca, ...  We saw a multitude of rock formations, some huge, some small, and people rock-climbing.  We walked to Barker Dam, which was used by miners, then by cattle ranchers.  JTNP used to get 10 inches a rainfall a year - now, it gets 2-3 inches.

The boys worked on becoming Junior Rangers, with a book of activities to complete.  When they handed it in at the end of our day, the Park Ranger, Sarah (who had taken her daughter to NZ a number of years ago) didn't just say "Well done, here is your badge" - she went through each page of work with them, getting them to talk about what they had seen and heard and adding more to it and encouraging them to keep on looking and learning as they go.  She was great.

They both had to write a desert poem acrostic - Sarah was very impressed with them.  Here they are.

Karl:
Dehydrating heat
Evolving wildlife
Sun blazing down
Every boulders shadow
Rocks rolling
Trees hiding under boulders

Robin:
Driving in the desert heat
Everybody's hot
Sun burning
Every boulder has thousands of stories
Rocks hot
Trees small and big

We finished up our day with a visit to Crossroads Cafe - I had a 3-bean chili and corn bread; Eric had a chicken quesadilla with black beans; the boys had an English muffin hamburger.  We all had dessert - apple pie, chocolate brownie, cheesecake.  Mmm - a great way to finish a full-on day.

Forgot to say, last night, both Eric & I felt the earth move - at separate times, and with moving doors.  We are quite close to the San Andreas fault line, after all!

Enjoy the selection of photos from our visit to Joshua Tree National Park.