Day 227, Sept 9, Joshua Tree National Park

 The weather gods favored us today, that’s for sure! In Joshua Tree National Park, daytime temperatures this time of year can reach 115. Add to that the relentless sun and lack of shade and it’s no wonder that search and rescue efforts in this area are quite common during these hot months. Last Sunday, we experienced a veritable heat wave, which is why I planned only short morning walks for our day to come here in Joshua. Today, however, the clouds moved in, rain threatened, cool winds blew, and we hiked like crazy. Today I worship those weather gods!



Joshua Tree covers a vast area of mostly parched Mojave Desert landscape yet is the 10th most visited national park. But because we came during what is normally an unbearably hot season, there are few people present. In fact, we have done a few hikes where we encountered not one soul, especially those hikes off the main drag through the park. We visited such places as…

* Hall of Horrors - A collection of jumbled granite boulders  shelter a couple of narrow albeit short slot canyons which we had to ourselves to scramble through.









* Cap Rock Nature Trail - A short trail with interpretive markers along the way explaining the flora and fauna was a great little gem in the desert. Crazy how plants and animals adapt to this most inhospitable environment.



 * Hidden Valley - This beautiful enclosed valley of jumbled rock is accessible through a narrow chasm blasted out by early cowboys who used this gorgeous valley to hide their rustled cattle in.






* Skull Rock - Easily recognizable as one of the most visited photo shoots in the park, this silly third-grader posing as my husband just had to have me snap a shot of him picking the nose of the skull. Yesh.

* Cholla Cactus Garden - Was such a bizarre experience  to walk through a veritable forest of cholla, those most wicked of cacti. Was quite surreal to be amongst them.                                         “If the plant bears any helpful or even innocent part in the scheme of things on this planet, I should be glad to hear of it.”







* 49 Palms Oasis - Joshua Tree harbors several oases where cracks in the fault line allow for water seepage and thereby splendid growth of hardy palms in the moisture rich soil of its small springs and ponds. 49 Palms is hidden deep in the barren rock landscape and mountains of this most hostile environment, and it was indeed a magnificent find, an unexpected gem of a oasis a short hike in.








All in all, I was bewitched by the thousands of acres of Joshua Trees, by our hikes through intriguing rock formations, our discovery of a most hidden and unexpected oasis, and by temperatures which never reached 80 degrees!


Good deeds: Small things like picking up others litter along a trail may not truly count as a good deed, but Aaron’s stopping of a young hiking couple to explain to them how to access the completely hidden and wildly fun-to-explore slot canyons most certainly does count. 


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