Joshua Tree National Park

November 15th, 2022

I have settled down for the winter in Arizona. The desert here is very flat, but divided by shallow washes, dry most of the time, but can fill up quickly if there is a good rain. This happens most of the time in August and early September. The flats are sand and dirt, but have stones pressed in which forms a solid surface for campers. There is little vegetation, mostly along the washes. Here I have set up my trailer with the tongue facing east, so the roof top solar panel gets sun all day without being in the shadow of the air conditioner housing. Also, my rear window faces the mountains to the west, where almost every day I am treated to a colorful sunset to view while eating my dinner.

There are some trails here and a few two track paths mostly used by all terrain vehicles (ATVs). I have hiked on these to the north and south, but they are pretty boring. They wind across the flat, usually only changing direction to be perpendicular as they cross a wash. You can see miles in the distance, so you can walk a mile and it seems as though you are in the same place. Elevation may change up to 12 feet, but only as you cross one of the washes. Rarely does your heart rate change once you set a pace.

I have a current daily exercise goal of 8,000 steps. For me that is about 3.5 miles. The trails here don’t get one very excited about a goal as they are like exercise indoors, which is to say, tedious. So, I have been looking for alternate places to hike. The weekend before last, I drove up to Bill Williams River Wildlife Refuge, near the outlet of Lake Havusu, an impoundment of the Colorado River (did Bill’s parents name him Bill, or was it William Williams?). I walked a mile on a peninsula of the lake. It was nice with lots of birds and bass fisherman, but too short in length.

I began looking for other places to hike, mostly south of here, towards the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and Yuma. There seem to be a lot of abandoned mines in that direction and one narrow canyon that contains a grove of palm trees. But for my most recent trip I decided to go west into California to hike in Joshua Tree National Park. It contains the Little San Bernardino Mountain Range with surrounding valleys and plateaus and is known for large areas of it’s name sake trees.

The trees are best known for their resilience and tenacity in a desert environment. They are bristled and twisted, making them picturesque. They are also endangered due to pollution and climate change. The area where they live, I would best describe as a mound of desert covered by discarded heaps of large round boulders and crumbled rock. The rocks and boulders vary in size from small bricks all the way to several story tall rounded and split masses. They are famous for climbing, especially those seeking the styles known as bouldering and crack climbing.

The attraction for me, was various trails that wind through these piles of boulders. My target for the day was the Split Rock Trail that starts near the Jumbo Rocks Campground.

The eastern edge of the park is about 1 1/2 hours drive from my campsite. I started out at 4:00 a.m. so as to arrive and start hiking shortly after sunrise. This translates into less people, more wildlife, and cooler temperatures. On this day it was 46 degrees when I got on the trail, but quicky warmed into the 60s. I topped off my fuel in Arizona, where gas was about a dollar less expensive and crossed the bridge over the Colorado River. I was a little shocked to discover what appeared like toll lanes and booths at the far end of the bridge. These were like what I used to throw my change at when I lived and worked in the western suburbs of Chicago. My first question was “do they charge an entrance fee to California?” There were no booths on the eastbound lanes, so it could not be a toll to cross the bridge. Perhaps it is like going through customs when entering Canada. Do they ask for your passport and make sure you aren’t a Republican? Maybe it is an invasive species thing. I will not find out this day, as so early in the morning, there was nobody in the booth. I drove on (later when I returned, I noticed there were cars lined up at the westbound booths).

After driving for about an hour, I turned right at a deserted and lonely exit from the interstate and slowly wound up the two lane blacktop into the park. Over the next hour, I saw not other vehicles, but as dawn came, I began to see the cactus, Joshua trees, and giant mounds of rock.

The hiking trail was excellent. Because I wound amongst the Jumbo Rocks, my visual distance was very short. Around every bend and over each hump, was a totally new view. At times I had to squeeze between huge boulders. The trail surface was sand and gravel, separated by climbs over step like stone and down through powdery washes. Almost everywhere were pillars of stone shaped like faces, some cartoon-like.

I looped north of the park road for 2.5 miles, never seeing another person, then crossed over and as I approached Skull Rock, ran into hikers from the nearby campground. As I had done all the way through South Dakota, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, I said “good morning”, “hello”, or “how are you doing” to everybody I met on the trail. In the past this occasionally started conversations over the amazing scenery or wildlife. But not here. The usual reaction was to say nothing, turn away, or sometimes give you a look that said “I don’t know you, why are you talking?” Hmmm! That made it a challenge, so I started saying “Hello, good morning, how are you doing” all at once to see if I could get any type of positive reaction. Nope! Maybe they were mad because I didn’t have to stop at the California Entrance Booth.

I stopped at the park visitor center after driving through the rest of the park, which is quite large. There were a good number of people there. When I entered the door, a young lady in a rangers uniform gave me a friendly greeting. I replied “Hi, how are you doing?”. She gave me the biggest smile. I suppose she wasn’t used to that.

I drove around the western end of the park and back down to I-10, catching views of some high peaks to the west, covered with snow. I yearned for Colorado. I hit the cruise control and made a bee line for Arizona.