Jane and Ron's RV Adventure: 5-20-11 I try again! Joshua Tree National Park, California

It's a new travel year and I've made a New Year's resolution to try to get the blog going again. It kind of fizzled last summer so there are no guarantees that I'll succeed with my resolution. Most of them fall by the wayside anyway. Here's hoping.

Over one of Ally's long weekend breaks from school last month we took her to Saguaro National Park in Tucson for a few days of warm-up camping. It was a nice hot weekend in the desert (hot, hot days, but cool beautiful nights) and I was ready to return home after the first two nights. Ally said, "No way." She loves to camp and that's all there is to it. She wasn't going to miss out on another S'more opportunity (had to make them inside - no fires!) or a chance to have the bats do their fly-bys at sunset (beautiful).

Does she aspire to be Bat Woman?

It was a fun, but short, trip and I was reminded of why we like to head north when the heat turns on. Doesn't that red hot sunset just make you know the heat is coming soon?

Just before we left home for our summer trip I decided to take a few photos of the home turf.

We've had a beautiful spring. Over the last few years we've traveled through many of our U.S. deserts and the Sonoran Desert is still at the top of our list for beauty. It never ceases to amaze me this time of year.

All this beauty and it's right out our front door. We are so lucky!

We were super organized this year. You'd think after 5 years on the road we would know what we were doing when it comes to packing. We were feeling pretty smug about having a smooth start to our trip. We told Peg and Scott that we would pick up Ally about 5:30 A.M. That was close, but it was more like 6 A.M. before we landed there. Not bad for us. Today was to be a long drive to Joshua Tree National Park in California and that's why we needed the early start.

You can tell by the annual send off photo that the parents were feeling the early hour. We and Ally were jazzed. We had our theme song, Willie's "On the Road Again", playing, the windows open to alert the neighborhood of our departure (surely they were cheering), and we were ready to hit the highways. As we were heading out to the main road I said, "Gee, I wonder if I shut the garage door." Don't you just hate that. You know you did, but now you have to go back and check. Mind games! We decided it would be easier to call our BFF, Mary, to check for us. End of smooth sailing...Ron couldn't find his cell phone. So, home we went and he searched in vain for that phone. You know how your mother always would tell you to settle down and trace your steps to figure out where you lost something (never liked that either)...well he finally did that and realized he had taken a call at a restaurant last night when we had gone together with Peg, Scott, and Ally to celebrate Peg's new teaching job and the end of Ally's good year at school. That meant the phone was either at the restaurant (big bummer) or in Scott's car (that would be good news). Well, it was in Scott's car and we finally put the rubber to the road (after a Starbucks stop) around 7:30. So much for smooth sailing and an early start.

We arrived a bit later than planned at Joshua Tree National Park.

After a stop at the visitor's center to pick up Ally's Junior Ranger booklet we headed for our campground, Jumbo Rocks. They don't take reservations there so it's best to get in early. We didn't. Just before we got to the campground we saw Skull Rock.

It was too cool to pass and we didn't know at that point that we could hike there from the campground...so we stopped for a little rock climbing and photo taking and that almost cost us a campsite for the night. When we finally started cruising the campground we could see that it was full. Every site looked occupied. We were just about out of options when I noticed a campsite with a tag on it but it didn't look like anyone was there so we checked that tag. The people had left that morning and the tag was never pulled.

Lucky us...we landed for the night. After that we could see folks riding through looking for sites and then moving on. That would mean at least another hour's drive before finding any campground. Jumbo Rocks is a really neat, but tight, campground and you'd better get there early!

Joshua Tree is a beautiful park. The roads are curvy and up and down. That was an omen of what was to come on this trip.

Ally loves to climb rocks. If you ask her what is her favorite park she'll tell you Arches National Park. That's because some very nice folks took her to the top of Double Arch on her first trip with us and she has never forgotten the thrill of that climb. We'll stop by there again this year so she can climb it again.

When we landed at Jumbo Rocks her eyes lit up, and yes, most of our time in Joshua Tree was spent...

...climbing those big boulders...

...and hiking.

The eastern half of the park is the Colorado Desert (below 3,000 feet). It shares some vegetation with the Sonoran Desert of our home. We see creosote, ocotillo, palo verde, and a beautiful garden of jumping (teddy bear, not so) cholla (ouch!).

The western part of the park is Mohave Desert habitat (above 3000 feet) and you know you're in the Mohave desert when you see Joshua Trees. These trees (not really, they're a member of the Yucca family) can grow as high as 40' at the rate of 1" a year. They make wonderful homes for a variety of birds and animals.

On our way to Hidden Valley we passed the Hall of Horrors. Now who can resist that?

We just had to check it out.

Here, were massive rock formations just made for climbing.

Ally, once again, made friends and found a climbing partner, Liz. Grandma and Pop draw the limit on some things and boulder hopping is one. It's funny how some kids take to certain things. Ally seems to love rock climbing and has no fear of heights. That's a good thing.

A hike into Hidden Valley, once a hideout for cattle rustlers, shows off the beauty of the Mohave Desert vegetation and rock sculpture.

We always read the park brochures and this park's brochure tells us that the big rock piles began as the result of volcanic activity underground eons ago. Magma, in the form of monzogranite, rose from deep in the Earth and intruded the overlying Pinto gneiss rock formation. As the granite cooled and crystalized underground, cracks (joints) formed vertically and horizontally. The granite continued to uplift and chemical weathering caused by groundwater widened the cracks and rounded the edges. The surface soil eroded over time leaving the piles of manzogranite we see today in the park. Really fun stuff!