After the Channel Islands, we started making our way to Joshua Tree. We broke up the drive by staying a night by Lake Hemet in the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains. We did not expect snow there, but it was a beautiful backdrop to wake up to.
I’ve been getting some questions about how we stay warm in the colder climates. I’ll address that in the Yogi page as I continue to work on this blog. Long story short, our sleeping bag is amazing!
After packing up the car, we finished our drive to Joshua Tree National Park. We stayed in the southern part of Joshua Tree the first night by the Cottonwood Visitor Center. Most people head straight to the northern part of Joshua Tree first as there’s more to do there but we wanted to see the whole park so we decided to go south to north. We ended the first night with a beautiful sunset and a toasty fire.
The next morning was our first official day inside of the park. The first hike we did was Lost Palms Oasis which is a 7.2 mile out and back hike. We also hiked Mastodon Peak, a 2.4 loop that connects to the Lost Palms Oasis trail.
We didn’t see any Joshua Trees on this trail as they are more abundant in the northern part of the park. But we did see a lot of different cacti, some desert animals and cool rock formations.
After the hike, we drove down to Slab City/Salvation Mountain as that was a place on both our lists that we wanted to check out. When we arrived, it was already dark, so we did a quick drive around the area and then set up camp near the entrance to the city.
When we woke up, we really saw how desolate the area was. It was cool to see how they created their own community in this area though. We stopped by Salvation Mountain on the way out.
Slab city is about 1.5hrs away from Joshua Tree so when we got back to the park we only had a few hours of daylight left for a hike. We did a few small hikes/walks to views points like Cholla Cactus Garden, Skull Rock, Ryan Mountain and Keys View. We stayed north of Joshua Tree this time on a dry lake bed.
On our last day, we went to the Wonderland of Rocks, Hidden Valley, Cap Rock, Lost Horse Mine, and Barker Dam.
That concludes our trip to Joshua Tree NP. Next, we’re headed to the Mojave Desert and Death Valley NP.
MoLeisureXventures 