desert solitaire

My grandma turned 90 in January and with a couple of weeks notice, I decided to fly out to Los Angeles to meet my mom and aunt to help them celebrate. I may have also had an ulterior motive…Joshua Tree National Park was only a two-hour drive away. I took an extra vacation day and after a few days of visiting my grandma, my mom and I headed east into the desert.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at this park. The word “desert” summons up images of a flat and barren landscape. I was obviously expecting to see the namesake Joshua Tree, but couldn’t imagine there being much more than that.

The drive to get to the park was very scenic, passing through several different ecosystems. Shortly after driving over the San Andreas Fault (and convincing my mom that she couldn’t fall into it) we came upon the first of several desert towns. The land was so barren and brown and there were very few people or cars around. It’s hard to imagine that lifestyle coming from green and rainy Florida.

We made a quick stop at the visitor center to get a few suggestions from a park ranger and then headed into the park. I was surprised to see how mountainous the region was. There are multiple fault lines crisscrossing the park creating large outcroppings of rock that seem to grow out of the earth from nowhere. This geologic activity was made evident at our first stop…White Tank. The highlighted feature here is a natural arch, but the whole area is a rocky playground…Tight squeezes, narrow paths, giant boulders and towering spires.

We took a short trail to check out the arch and then scrambled around the rock formations.

I even think my mom enjoyed climbing around the rocks!

The Mojave and Colorado deserts converge in this park, creating two distinct desert landscapes. We entered the park from the north which put us in the Mojave Desert. This desert is a high desert with altitudes between 2,000-5,000 feet. The presence of the Joshua Tree, an indicator species, generally defines the boundary of the desert. After exploring White Tank, we headed south through the transition zone between the two deserts. The elevation decreased dramatically and we found ourselves in a wide open basin. The Joshua Trees disappeared and we arrived at the Cholla (choy-a) Cactus Garden.

The garden seemed like it belonged on another planet. The variegated stems were so unique and colorful. The small branches fall off and easily root themselves, explaining the abundance of plants in this specific area. The Cholla grows sporadically in other areas of the park, but not in a concentrated garden like this one.

From there we headed back north and entered the Jumbo Rocks area of the park. Here we did a leisurely 2 mile hike through more rock formations and checked out the park’s namesake tree.

By the end of the hike it was late afternoon. As much as I would have loved to have stayed for a sunset* photo shoot, my mom was not at all interested in driving through the desert in the dark. I didn’t put up much of a fight since she was nice enough to come along with me! We stopped for some Mexican food and headed back towards the city.

Similarly to my visit to Lassen Volcanic, I was pleasantly surprised by what this National Park had to offer. On the drive home, my mom admitted that going into it she didn’t see how visiting a desert could be that interesting. Seeing the park changed her mind and she ended up enjoying it. I guess the thing I have to keep in mind is that the U.S. wouldn’t designate something a National Park if it wasn’t unique!

*As luck would have it, the sunset during our drive in L.A. rush hour traffic may have been the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever seen.