MOJAVE / JOSHUA TREE DAY 3 - HOUSES ON THE HILLS

 

We’re out earlier today, driving across the desert floor to pick up route I-10 near the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm.  Even though it’s been good and windy these last few days, about a third of the turbines are not spinning.  We also notice that every single one of the 666 bright white poles all are stained black by the gallons of sticky oil leaking from the nacelle housing the gearbox and generator.  Clean energy.  Hmmmmm.  I’m no hater, but this cannot be good.

(click on the picture to view the full size image)

But of more immediate concern is what this morning’s wind is bringing.  Dust.  Lots and lots of choking desert dust.  It apparently happens often enough that it even has a name.  They call it a “haboob” here, which I think translates to “that’s life in the big desert”.  First we see it up the road like smoke from a wild fire.  When we drive into the wall of it, we’re in whiteout conditions, visibility cut to just a few yards.  As soon as we get on the highway, we start the rapid ascent up the Orocopia Mountains blessedly leaving the dust in our dust.  It’s a second sunrise as the sky turns bluer with each passing mile.  Fortunately, the car is already dust covered from our last few days, so no harm, no foul, no surcharge.

We make the town of Joshua Tree in about 50 minutes and hang a right into the north-western entrance of the park.  Its Saturday so Mandy is taking the Disneyworld approach… get there early, go to the furthest point before the crowds and work backwards.  That woman is a logistics genius.  Our first stop is Skull Rock, one of the most popular attractions.  As planned (by Mandy, I just steer), parking is easy and close.  A nice couple from Wisconsin (like there’s any other kind) offers to take our picture.  Of course, he’s a professional photographer… he’s from Wisconsin and I think there’s a law there that you need to have at least a minor in photography before you travel just in case you have the opportunity to take someone’s picture.  You meet the nicest people on the trail.

Starting from the skull, we embark on the Skull Rock / Jumbo Rock Loop trail.  It’s beautiful and fun right from the get-go and there are plenty more rock creatures to discover. 

(sleeping dog? grumpy old guy?)

(this guyyyyy!)

We pay particular attention to the diagonal scars found in so many of the formations here.  Called dikes, they appear as broken terrace walls laced through the boulders.  We later find out that these lines form when molten rock was pushed into existing joint fractures of the older stones.  Looking like the work of a stonemason, the molten rock broke into uniform blocks when exposed to the surface.

Heading north, we hang a left and do a detour up Geology Tour Road.   It’s the same road we drove up last night to stargaze, but we obviously didn’t see any of the landscape in the dark.  The road is largely untraveled, peaceful.  Large swaths populated sparsely with the park’s namesake trees.  Views to the horizon.  We drive along without speaking, just looking, absorbing, mesmerized.  It gets rougher than the Toyota sedan can handle after about 4 miles, so u-bee it is.

Before it was a national park, there were a few inhabitants here.  To see the remnants of those hardy (crazy?) residents, we set out on the Ryan Ranch hike, an easy mile out and back with less then 150’ of elevation.  It’s cool and sunny and we make good time to the adobe structure that belonged to J.D. Ryan, the operator of the nearby Lost Horse Mine in the late 1800s.  It’s not the remaining walls that capture our interest, but the many hundred feet tall pile of rocks behind it.  On Mandy’s suggestion, we decide to free scramble our way to the top. 

Our highest elevation of the trip comes at Keys view, a 20 minute drive to the peak 5,185 feet above sea level.  We can easily pick out the San Andres fault and the Salton Sea from our high vantage point.  On a clear day, you can see Palm Springs and all the way to the Mexico border.  But what we see today in the distance is dust.  That same dust from this morning, still filling the entire valley hours later, and from here we can see the full extent of the anomaly, a thick white line between us and distant mountains. 

Starting to crash, it’s back to the Joshua Tree Saloon for a late lunch-and-libations.  Even though it’s an honest-to-goodness western saloon, it’s still a California joint.  We are reminded of this when our rough-and-tumble barmaid lets us know that any burger can be made as a lettuce wrap.  I’ve been watching carbs since January, so we take her up on her offer.  Including the two bottles of Mich Ultra, I keep lunch under 6g.

Mandy may have had other plans after lunch.  OK, she absolutely had other plans after lunch.  I throw a wrench into the works when I tell her I want to hike to that house.  You, know, that house you showed me when you were researching.  Turns out it’s called the Eagle Cliff Boulder House, and it’s waaaay at the end of (and tippy top of) the Desert Queen Mine hike.  It’s the longest, steepest trek of the day which means we probably should have done it early.  When we were fresh.  And weren’t worried about losing sunlight.  And our legs aren’t already sore.  And I haven’t had 2 beers.  The fastest route there takes us west along 29 Palms Highway for 20 minutes, into the park at the 29 Palms entrance and then another 20 minutes down the park road.  We turn off the paved road, and drive so far down the dirt path that we both start to doubt we’re in the right place (her out loud, me never admitting anything of the sort 😊).  Sure enough we find the trail head and start out, first dropping 200’ or so into a canyon, only to immediately climb back up the other side.  It’s here we start passing the remnants of the mine – vertical grates covering the mineshaft entrances, horizontal grates covering the ventilation shafts, plus a splattering of long retired mining equipment which was abandoned in place.  History frozen in time.

Half way up we pass an artist sitting cross legged on the ground, just starting to sketch an unremarkable little tree.  Nod, push on.  The views are better and better with each step higher.  We’re pushing, quads groaning.  Last few segments are steep, narrow, loose rocks act as ice if you hit them wrong.  We make the top and seek out our destination.  Legend we heard is a WWI vet in the early 1920s was given a poor prognosis and only a few months to live.  He decided to bear it out alone on the top of this mountain, where he fashions a rudimentary 150 square foot home from a cave plus a bit of timber and some ingenuity. 

The “stove” was a fire pit with a stone chimney fashioned in the crevasse between two of the boulders that form the back wall.  Wooden crates serve as storage.  A lower section in the cave served as a bedroom.  Apparently the desert air did him wonders and he spent his last 20 some years here.  The place is beautifully preserved with many of his possessions still present.  We wonder aloud how difficult gathering the most basic supplies would be with the nearest town a full day horse ride away.  And I can’t even imagine what a pain it would be to dust before company came over.

Less rushed on our way down, We stop for a few landscape pix.  Passing the artist again, I glance at her tablet, and the yellows and browns and golds of her pastels.  It makes me look at her subject tree and I realize that her art lets me see the plant, one of millions here in the park, as remarkable thanks to her artistic eye. 

We’re lucky to have one last sunset here and find a location with a long view.  We sit and snap and kiss and sit.  I lay and Mandy sits perpendicular facing the sunset with me as her backrest.  Fade out.

We try Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown for dinner, about 20 minutes out of the way, but the place is packed with a 90 minute wait and our trail worn bodies need to be satiated.  Down the hill, right on the side of Rt 62 is the Snake Bite Roadhouse.  Looks old diner-ish, we try.  Genuine biker bar complete with Hells Angels in colors splattered among the eclectic boho crowd.  But there’s something welcoming about the busy place.  Mandy finds seats at the bar between a genuine cowboy and a guy who manages a golf resort in Palm Springs, one nicer and chattier then the other.  Young women, really lean in to vintage fashion, one is a ‘20s flapper getup (including the beaded bell shaped cloche hat), another in a full 1960s wedding dress.  It’s like the bar scene from the original Star Wars, but with better music.  When Mandy orders a glass of wine, the bartender responds with “you want the mom pour?”.  We look puzzled, so she continues “I’ll just fill it all the way to the top!”  Yea, Mandy wants that. 

MOJAVE / JOSHUA TREE DAY 2 - SUNSET AT JOSHUA TREE

 

Well rested, we make a healthy breakfast, pack some wraps and head out.  It’s almost an hour to Cottonwood, the south entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.  At the visitor center, we get our pass and a map, and double check that we’ve downloaded the National Parks app and the Joshua Tree map set in AllTrails.  

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It’s the first time we have used the Parks Service app and it’s very good, providing an audio guide for each point of interest along the drive.  It hits on a lot of details that we definitely would have missed out on, and gives us greater appreciation of the park, especially the flora.  First stop is Smoketree Wash, the spillway that becomes a wide raging river during the flash floods, identifiable by the white sand instead of the brown-gray everywhere else.  As the elevation starts and we pass Porcupine Wash and Pinto Basin, the hardscrabble rockpile hills morph into genuine mountains with bulbous rock features in the foreground. 

On the narrator’s suggestion, we stop to see the stalky Ocotillo plant, it’s rare red flowers just starting their spring bloom.  Next, we play in the Cholla Cactus Garden, a naturally occurring feature that appears to span several hundred acres.  These furry, funny plants absolutely exude personality and appear to vibrate-glow in the sunlight.  We watch as a grandmother, trying to get a vacation picture with her granddaughter, learns why they are called the Coachella are also called Jumping Cactus when her bottom barely brushes the plant while posing and is treated to a butt full of needles.  Not content to learn that lesson once, we watch as she does the same thing 5 minutes later.  Thanks, National Parks app, for literally saving my ass.

We continue through the desert canyon where the Colorado Desert to the south gives way to the Mojave Desert to the north.  We’re surprised at the elevation change, so steep it pops our ears, and the rock formations dramatically change again.  The Arch Rock / Heart Rock hike is a big, happy playground where we pick out all sorts of stone creatures like elephants, monkeys, whales, squid and, of course, that most Insta-ready heart.  The trails are nice, but it's way more fun to scramble in, over, under and around the formations instead.  

(whale and seals)

(giant squid)

(giant martini olive)

(arch rock)

We also get up close to some Desert Mistletoe (that we heard about in the app), a bright red plant that grows on the stems of other host plants after it’s seeds are deposited in bird droppings.  It’s about 2 miles by the time we get back to the car and even though it’s cool, we can tell how quickly you can become dehydrated. 

Next stop Live Oak Picnic Area, so named for the Mons Oak, an ultra-rare deciduous tree in the desert.  Suspected to be a strange, naturally occurring hybrid of two dissimilar oak trees in the American southwest, there are only two known living examples of this tree, both here in Joshua Tree.  Past the tree, the expanse of the valley opens up in golden hues all the way to the horizon.  Forgoing the picnic tables, we find a nice perch on a high rock for our trail-picnic lunch. 

We buzz out of the park through the north entrance into the town of Joshua Tree.  It’s reminiscent of Woodstock New York, still trying to hold onto its past-it-prime Hippie heritage.  There are an abundance of “vintage” shops, selling everything from dusty old clothes to dusty old décor to dusty new tee shirts in mostly open air stalls and stores.  Big Josh’s is fun and photogenic, but we give up on those shops pretty quickly and head to the town’s only bar, the Joshua Tree Saloon.  It’s an authentic western joint with cold beer and a female bartender who finds a way to work the F-word into every sentence at least once.  The mood is happy, the music is good.  This place is us.  Across the street is the Visitor Center, and the elderly ranger gives us a pro tip on where to see the sunset tonight. 

Back into the Park, we leave the car near mile marker 21 and just walk into the field of Joshua Trees.  If you’ve never seen one, the branches are covered in an almost furry bark, with a spikey ball of green leaves(ish) at the top of each one.  If you told me Dr Suess designed these, I’d totally believe you.  The idea this afternoon is to get a picture of the park’s most famous resident in front of the orange glow of the sunset.  We upgraded our camera for Christmas and even took a photography class, so we’re going to try with both our new R10 mirrorless and our iPhones.  We probably take a few hundred exposures, Mandy doing better then me, the iPhone outperforming the camera, but we’re still working out the aperture and ISO settings.  In the end, it’s romantic to just sit on our blanket and just watch the day fade.

Did I mention there’s only one bar in town?  And only a few other places are open for dinner, so it’s back to the Saloon.  My ribs are humongous, Mandy’s chicken is fantastic and the service is downright excellent, both friendly and attentive.  We bide our time until it’s good and dark outside.  It’s about 60 miles from the north entrance to south and about 25 miles in is certified dark skys area.  Tonight is the new moon, as dark as it gets at night, and we’re hoping to do some high quality star gazing. The stars are great to start , but no sooner do we get there than the clouds start rolling in.  We didn’t know that at night clouds can reflect light from towns hundreds of miles away, becoming glowing reflectors and foiling the dark sky view.  Regardless, the desert at night is a pretty magical place to be, so we take it all in from our blanket for a while.  The drive the rest of the way to the south entrance is an experience to itself, winding roads in the pitch black like the setup to a Hitchcock movie to end our day’s adventure.