Joshua Tree National Park

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April 23

Joshua Tree National Park

About 1.25 hours after leaving Palm Springs, we arrived at Joshua Tree National Park’s Visitor’s Center in the town of Joshua Tree.

We chatted with a ranger and then proceeded about 5 miles to the west entrance of the park. We figured on exploring this section before driving the 30 miles through the park to our campsite at the Cottonwood Campground. We learned that Joshua trees are only found in the west half of this very large park. The east half, where we camped, contains no Joshua trees. However, it is still beautiful, and home to an amazing hike, which we did on our last day.

Hidden Valley Nature Trail

There were 10 cars ahead of us at the west entrance, but it only took about 5 minutes to get through. Getting through around 1:30 p.m. we proceeded down Park Blvd. to Hidden Valley, the park’s most popular area, to hike the Hidden Valley Nature Trail.

This is an easy 1-mile loop trail that gave us our first up-close encounters with Joshua trees. It also gave us our first (and luckily our only) encounter with a rattlesnake!

There is other flora to see besides Joshua trees, too.

It took us about an hour to complete the excellent Hidden Valley Nature Trail.

Cap Rock Nature Loop

Our next stop, not far away was the very short Cap Rock Nature Loop. Though a different trail, this could have just been an extension of the Hidden Valley trail. There isn’t much different to see, but Joshua trees do abound here, so definitely worth the effort.

 

Skull Rock

Not so much worth the effort was our next stop along Park Boulevard (the main scenic route here). We stopped to see Skull Rock. This natural, creepy rock formation is right off the side of the road, and so EVERYBODY stops to see it…including busloads of tourists from Las Vegas. Em wasn’t feeling well at this time (she actually hadn’t felt well the past couple of days), so she napped in the car on the side of the road as I ventured to fend off the throngs of people to get my due share of Skull Rock!

Em briefly joined me after her quick nap just to say she saw it, but a line of tourists made it not so fun.  However, as fate would have it, we would return the next day and get joint photo ops with Skull Rock. (See below).

It was now around 4:00 p.m. We decided to head to Cottonwood Campground, about an hour’s drive to the other side of Joshua Tree NP. This side of the park is more desert and rock…beautiful in its own right, just with no Joshua trees.

There is another ranger station in the Cottonwood section of the park, so though we drove a long way from the west entrance we were not really isolated.  In fact, the highway was only about 15 minutes away out the east side of the park. Our desert campsite was great. We got a beautiful sunset over the mountains, had dinner in a bag, lit a fire, then hit the sack.

April 24

Breakfast at the campsite. Emilie was feeling pretty sick by now, so we headed to the city of Indio, outside the nearby east entrance to Joshua Tree to find an Urgent Care. There is no internet access anywhere in this part of the park, so we had to drive about 15 minutes before we could research care options in Indio. Em got her antibiotics while I got a haircut in the rather large city of Indio.

After our medicinal and grooming detour to Indio we decided to continue driving in that direction to circle back to the west entrance station of Joshua Tree National Park as it was only an hour from here. This made more sense than going back the way we came, then driving across the park to get to the places we wanted to go today, which was the west section with the Joshua trees.

Maze Loop Trail

At around 12:30 p.m. we arrived at the trailhead of our favorite hike in the west section of the park, the Maze Loop Trail.  This trail is not listed on the brochure handed out at the visitors center, or on the NPS website’s list of Joshua Tree hikes. It is listed and described on the NPS app on our iPad though.  Apparently the park service does not market it in the summer months due to its 5-mile length.  The benefit of course is that there are few people on the trail, as opposed to the very good but very populated Hidden Valley Nature Trail. We hiked 3 miles in and out and really enjoyed the mountainous desert scenery, colorful flora, loads of Joshua trees, and no people.

 

Along the trail we were inspired to reenact the U2 Joshua Tree album cover!

Skull Rock (again)

Driving eastward down Park Boulevard as we did yesterday provided us with another opportunity to stop at Skull Rock.  This time there were fewer throngs of people and Em and I got better quality time with Mr. Skull.

Arch Rock Nature Trail

Our next stop along Park Boulevard, at around 3:30 p.m. was the Arch Rock Nature Trail (and Heart Rock). This hike is just under 2 miles in and out, including both Arch Rock and the diversion to Heart Rock. The trail is well marked and easy.

At about the half-mile mark, the trail allows for a detour to Heart Rock but we opted to continue to Arch Rock first.  Once we got to Arch Rock it became a meander/scramble around the area. All of the oddly shaped rock formations, and the tight, serpentine, maze-like pathways were a lot of fun.  It’s interesting to see such a large, playful  boulder field in the middle of the desert.  Oh, and Arch Rock could easily be called Elephant Rock.

After playing around Arch Rock for a bit we headed back to the trail toward Heart Rock.  This wasn’t always a trail, but the popularity of the rock made it necessary to create an actual trail with markings.  No wonder, when they say “Heart” Rock, they mean “Heart”!

We got back to the car at around 5:00 p.m. and headed back across the park to our campsite at Cottonwood Campground.  Along the way we took in some very unique and very cool Joshua Tree National Park scenery.

April 25

Mastodon Peak Loop Trail

On our final morning in Joshua Tree National Park we had a leisurely breakfast at the campsite and gradually packed up the tent.  Em was already feeling better with just one day of antibiotics…the miracle drug. The most popular hike in this Cottonwood section of the park is the 9-mile Lost Palms Oasis trail, about one mile from the campground.  We headed there to conquer the Mastodon Peak Loop trail, which is a 3-mile loop trail that is part of the larger Oasis trail. Our objective was to climb Mastodon Peak.

The hike is an easy one but offers so much. We encountered a real desert palm oasis, a gold mine relic with its entrance sealed, fantastic desert scenery, and a very fun and highly rewarding rock scramble to the 400-foot+ craggy summit of Mastodon Peak.

Once we reached the base of the peak we were on our own. The scramble to the top required ingenuity as there isn’t a marked trail to the summit…but that was part of the fun of this hike. We encountered two other older couples like us scrambling along the rocks.

After about 20 minutes of scramble, we made it to the summit. OMG…what a view!!

One of the couples we met was heading down as we were going up.  When at the summit we could see them below.  So, I called out to them to see if they would take our picture from their perspective at the bottom.  Amazingly, we could hear each other, and so we took their picture and they took ours.

Here is their picture of us.

After the scramble down and back on the trail, we took a picture of where we came down from.

That was an awesome hike!  A great way to say goodbye to this amazing place.

At around 1:00 p.m. it was on to Tucson, Arizona and Saguaro National Park, about 6 hours away.

Next: Saguaro National Park