Joshua Tree

One of my Swedish friend’s wishes while in LA was to visit one of our national parks. Aside from the Channel Islands, the nearest national park to LA is Joshua Tree. After sitting in traffic on Thursday, we thought that Friday would be a great day to ditch the city and head to the desert. Luckily our mustang agreed, so we hit the road.

Route planning (Thanks, Ruth, for the photo!)

Joshua Tree National Park sneaks up on you. From the standard grid of a small desert town, there is a turn into a neighborhood where an adobe building marks the National Parks Visitor's Center. We popped in for maps, water, and a car pass. They also had a museum educating visitors about the history, geology, ecology, and pop culture references of Joshua Tree. Then we piled back into the mustang, put the roof down, and turned on U2. May I suggest a listen while you read?

The highlight of Joshua Tree isn't the Joshua trees (although they're cool!), but the rocks. Massive, oversized boulders cracked by tectonic forces, injected with pressurized magma, weathered by wind and water (but mostly wind... it is, after all, a desert). We planned on looping through the main road down to the Cochella valley, passing all of the major sites on the way.

 Our first hike was up Mt Ryan, a short distance from the road and a steep 5-mile round trip. We were lucky that it was somewhere in the 70's with a breeze off the mountains. We were warm at the top, but not overheated. 

 Every time I looked out at the massive stone outcroppings, my hands got itchy. I would love to go back some other sunny March weekend to climb the rocks! There are some bolted routes and so many more that were begging to be scrambled up. Most of the rock had a coarse, lumpy texture that would have eaten my hands... but it would have been so much fun! 

We lunched at Split Rock, and then Maria and I took a loop through the rocks next to our lunch site while Ruth found a sunny rock and read. We found all sorts of cool shapes in the stone and criss-crossed a dry stream bed. Aside from the usual detour (I somehow got us on the climber's trail), it was a loop I highly recommend!