Joshua Tree

One of the things I did to kill time during the heart of the pandemic (and no, I'm not thinking it's over or anything silly like that...I did say HEART of the pandemic) was to create little trip plans all over the United States that I might be able to take at a moment's notice if the opportunity ever came up. This did a couple of things for me: (1) it kept my sense of wanderlust alive by giving me some travel planning to do and (2) it kept me ready to go just in case something crazy happened like a sudden drop in COVID cases. And just maybe it kept me sane overall.

I spent a lot of time doing this in the long winter and spring months of 2020 and 2021. I now have a long, long list of three and four and five day domestic excursions in my head and on spreadsheets and in emails that I've sent to myself. We've managed to do one or two of the ideas I came up with while sitting at home all that time, but most remain ideas to be carried out sometime in the future. Or never, maybe.

One destination that kept cropping up again and again on these mini-excursions was Joshua Tree National Park. Arizona to Los Angeles. Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Las Vegas to San Francisco. Los Angeles to Palm Springs and back. There may have been others but all of those ideas included a stop at Joshua Tree. And as it turned out, the time for the Los Angeles to Palm Springs and back trip turned out to be March of 2022. And of course, there was a stop at Joshua Tree as a day trip from Palm Springs with retro cocktails at a culturally appropriated tiki bar as a reward for a day of hiking. That last part has really nothing to do with Joshua Tree but it did happen. And we will come back to it.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect of Joshua Tree National Park. In my imagination, I pictured a lot of Joshua trees, which I pretty much saw as a palm tree wishing it was a cactus, spread out among a sort of desert landscape. Why is this appealing enough to find its way onto a handful of getaway trips created during a global pandemic? I have no idea, but there was some kind of irresistible appeal for me about strange trees in the desert. So they had to be seen, as much to see them as to reveal what else there was to find. So we went.

Before we left on this trip by the way, my mom asked me why it's called a Joshua tree. I had no idea. According to the Park's website, there's a legend about the trees appearing to westward-headed Mormons as resembling the biblical figure Joshua, with arms outspread in a request for God to aid the Israelites in their passage across the Jordan River, perhaps. Or for assistance in battle against the Israelites' enemies, maybe. It's a type of yucca, and a member of the agave family, which to me is most notable as the main ingredient in tequila, not that I drink much tequila outside of the odd margarita. Like that pivot from Mormons to margaritas? It's the tiki bar maybe. 

We went to Joshua Tree with a plan. Why wouldn't we, after all? We always have some sort of plan. It's what we do.

Usually, our plan for a day of hiking in the desert would have included an early start to get out into the Park before it got anything approaching hot. But since we were staying about an hour's drive from Joshua Tree, we figured we'd go with a bunch of small, straightforward treks rather than doing anything super complicated and committed.  Now, I know late March sounds like a not hot time of year, but we saw weather forecasts in the 90s in the high desert of southern California so we stuck with hikes in the "Easy" category on Joshua Tree's website with what sounded like interesting things to see. Why hike a long way when you don't have to?

Our plan included five short hikes. Specifically and in alphabetical order...Barker Dam, Cap Rock, Cottonwood Spring, Keys View and Skull Rock. Total length of 3.55 miles and total elevation change of 280 feet, with 1.7 miles of length and 160 feet of elevation change concentrated at Skull Rock. These five hikes would get us (according the Park's website) good looks at bighorn sheep, Joshua trees (duh...), birds, the San Andreas Fault and a huge rock shaped like...wait for it...a skull. We didn't really believe the bighorn sheep part of the promise, by the way. We've been looking for these things enough with relatively little success to keep our expectations super low.

First stop: the Park's Oasis Visitor Center. Our plans instantly changed during a five minute chat with the Park Ranger on duty. Cottonwood Spring is about an hour's drive or maybe a little more so maybe a little remote. Take the birding spot off the list. Oh well...the other four still sounded good, although still skeptical about those bighorns.

Skull Rock. I guess it looks like a skull just maybe not a human skull.

So let's get the disappointments out of the way. So, sure, we came up empty on the bighorn sheep front. We knew we wouldn't really stand much of a chance of seeing any, especially not a few hours after sunrise, so no surprise there. We also didn't think much of Skull Rock. That was our longest planned hike but the trail seemed to us very confusing. We couldn't find any signs pointing us to the rock that resembled a skull and actually went down two separate paths before turning back only to find that the actual Skull Rock was at the end of the trail right by the road where we had started. We had parked maybe 50 feet away before walking right past it. Maybe we are dummies or maybe it didn't look much like a skull to us.

But the biggest disappointment was at Keys View, where we were supposed to be able to see the San Andreas Fault. Now, I would have thought that having a place where you could see one of the most famous tectonic joints between the Earth's crust would be an absolute showstopper. I don't know quite what I expected here, maybe a giant crack in the landscape that looked like it might open up wider at any moment or something. Honestly, we could not tell where it was. Moreover, there were signs pointing out notable points of interest about the view and not a single one of them showed us where the Fault might be. Mount San Jacinto? Check. San Gorgonio Mountain. Also check. San Andreas Fault? Nothing. Nada.

 

But Joshua Tree was far from a disappointment overall. It actually excelled as a National Park in two very significant ways. First, and I know this is stupid to say, there were the Joshua trees themselves. These things are fascinating. Sometimes they look like cacti, with a couple of limbs pointing skyward and not much more (and by cacti I of course mean the saguaro, which I realize is not all cacti). Sometimes they look like regular trees with some sort of generic branch structure. And sometimes they look like no tree known to regular man and just grow wherever and in whatever direction they feel like.

There's the crazy bark, the equally if not more crazy flower pods (that were not in bloom when we were there but are shown above) and the spiny thick leaves that altogether against the background of the Sonoran Desert seem like they are just in the perfect place. Of course, the reason why they don't look like any trees out there is that they are not really trees at all, but yucca (I realize I already said that) in very much more vertical form than any other yucca plant that I've ever seen.

I think it's the variety that kept me fascinated with these things at every stop we made. There's no typical Joshua tree. One is as unlike its neighbor as it wants to be. So what we saw at Cap Rock was as different as what we saw at Barker Dam. For that matter, two trees right next to each other at either stop might be totally different too. There's a reason why there are so many pictures of these plants on this post. They were completely the star of the show. Stood in front of one of the innumerable rock piles in the Park, they are as photogenic a non-tree as they can be. I get the appeal now for real. It's the different shapes and the variety is endless.

The second significant way that Joshua Tree excelled as a National Park was in the quality of its birdlife, although honestly, I'm not sure we even scratched the surface much.

So first of all, I know I already wrote about having to ditch Cottonwood Spring. And no, we didn't end up going down there after all. We didn't even consider it, because we'd already completed my big picture birdlife goal for the Park before we even got into the Visitor Center and had our chat with the Ranger.

We got to Joshua Tree early the day we visited. And by early here, I mean before the Oasis Visitor Center was open by about 15 to 30 minutes. While we were waiting for the building to open, I noticed what turned out to be a mockingbird sitting right in front of me on a treetop so I headed back to the car to grab the camera to take a picture or two. Now, mockingbirds may not be that exciting to you and truly, we have had some in our back yard in Virginia this weekend that I've finished this post, but it's always exciting to me to see wild birds out in an open space the likes of Joshua Tree National Park. 

There's a small walking trail adjacent to the Visitor Center where we saw a different mockingbird (presumably male) engaged in what looked like some mating dance to attract the attention of a lady mockingbird. We watched him for a few minutes chirping away in between throwing himself into the air and landing on the same branch he launched from over and over. In between launching and landing, he showed off pretty much all his feathers in a series of non-flying contortions that were incredible to see. I've tried to capture that sequence in the photographs below.

No, our bird goal for Joshua Tree was not to see a mockingbird.

For the last few months, I've been a little obsessed with roadrunners. We saw one years ago running across the road (appropriately enough) in New Mexico on our way from Silver City to Las Cruces and we were teased with the possibility of a repeat sighting when we went back to New Mexico in December last year. Ultimately, we came up empty just before Christmas but I thought it would be great to see a roadrunner out in Joshua Tree.

That first mockingbird sighting at Joshua Tree that sent me back to the car to get the camera was great timing. Because when I came back to photograph the mockingbird, there was a roadrunner standing on palm tree right in front of me.

If there's a luckier bird sighting I've had in my life, I don't know what it is. This is the closest I've ever been to a mostly stationary roadrunner and considering it was my goal to see one in a Park that I hadn't even entered yet, I felt super fortunate. It didn't stick around long. It quickly exited the palm, crossed the path we were about to walk down and ran away. They are fast. I got a couple of great pictures. I love the coloration of the bird against the palm and the eye looks just incredible. You can see the dinosaur resemblance, but maybe because I've been sold a bill of goods in Jurassic Park and I'm all in.

Considering this encounter, I was OK skipping Cottonwood Spring.

Joshua Tree wasn't what we thought it would be. No giant cracks in the Earth, no bighorn sheep and no great variety of birdlife. It was awesome just the same. Even without the variety of bird sightings, and honestly until I get better looks at roadrunners I'm cherishing those couple of minutes every minute of my life, the place was amazing. I understand the pull of the Joshua trees now. I knew I had it on tons and tons of mini-itineraries for a reason. I just needed to go to understand the actual reason.

Our journey to Joshua Tree took about a half a day or so. We left Palm Springs before 7:30 in the morning and were back in town before 3, just in time for the Tonga Hut to open so we could enjoy a cocktail or two on their balcony and think back on our morning and early afternoon in the Park. I can't recommend enough going to Joshua Tree and I also can't recommend enough going for a cocktail after you are done roaming around the desert looking at crazy trees and rocks and maybe the occasional roadrunner. I'd advise you get something a little crazy if you do opt to hit the Tonga Hut if you are staying in Palm Springs. I can definitely suggest the Tabu Tabu Grog. Never had a drink with allspice and a rock candy stick in it before. There's apparently a first time for everything. I appreciated the double maraschino cherries. 

One last look at the Joshua trees and an oh-so-good Tabu Tabu Grog.

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How We Did It

Joshua Tree National Park is open 24/7 every week of the year. There are three points of access to the Park and a Visitor Center at each one. The main Visitor Center, which we drove right past on our way to the Oasis Visitor Center, seems to have the longest hours, followed by Oasis and then Cottonwood. The hours for each are on the Park's website.

There are no restaurants in the Park, nor did we find any sources of water. We took our Yeti lunch bag and water bottles with and packed our own food (Thanks, Ralph's!) and picnicked for lunch. There are picnic areas all over the Park. We found a shady spot near Cap Rock.

If you are staying in Palm Springs, I can definitely recommend the cocktails and the balcony at the Tonga Hut. Yes, I know there's a certain amount of appropriation and stereotyping of Polynesian culture here and ultimately we probably should avoid that sort of stuff, but the place serves good drinks and I appreciated the maps near our table mapping out all the places the Polynesians traveled in tiny craft that people from supposedly more sophisticated places like Europe never could have made it to. As of this writing, they are open Thursday through Sunday from 5 p.m. on weekdays and 3 p.m. on weekends. 

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