With Paulette off to a special Monday of quilting with her friends at the North Hall, I thought I’d take Molly and Rylie for a drive and return to Joshua Tree National Park for another visit. The park pass we paid $15 for a few days ago is good for 7 days so I figured I may as well take advantage of it since I had no other plans for the day.
One of the great scenic points in Joshua Tree National Park
There are 3 main entrances to Joshua Tree with 2 being on the north side off of the Twenty-Nine Palms Hi-way and the other off of I-10 on the south side of the park. Last Friday we entered at Yucca Valley, toured around the park, and ended up exiting the same way.
These small campsites among the boulders were pretty nice
So, just to change things up a bit, yesterday I drove east on I-10 to the south entrance and from there drove through the park all the way to the Twenty-Nine Palms exit. Joshua Tree is a big park and it’s almost impossible to tour it in just one day even while driving.
Driving into the south entrance I was met by mostly wide areas of open desert stretching for miles in all directions. This was the place we saw fields of beautiful wildflowers a few years ago. No luck with that yesterday as it’s either too early or maybe not enough rain this year for the wildflowers to grow. They can lay dormant for several years apparently and then burst into bloom again.
I took a few side roads to check out some of the campgrounds. Most of them seemed setup for tenting or folks with Class C type rigs. I didn’t run across any 5’ers in these camps but I did see a few Class A Motorhomes. Each campsite is located beneath huge piles of boulders that offer great protection from any wind.
No matter which route you take through Joshua Tree, you will always come across collections of huge boulders piled high to form all kinds of interesting shapes. It was another beautiful day with temps in the mid-80’s so it was perfect for walking around checking things out.
There was some road construction underway in the park with delays of up to 25 minutes expected. Luckily, I just pulled up into the line as the last cars were passing by heading south. After only a few minutes wait, we were waved through and continued on our way.
Twenty-Nine Palms and the big Marine Base in the background
Time flies when you’re having fun and it was 4:40pm by the time we got back to the Sands. Paulette was getting worried as she had no idea where we were and said she was thinking I must have been hi-jacked somewhere and was going to end up on a future episode of “48 Hours”!! Jeesh!!
Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!
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