J Tree

JOSHUA TREE! NATIONAL PARK!

This was a semi-spontaneous trip that was so refreshing!

This past Monday Elizabeth, David, and I planned out a Death Valley road/camping trip down to the details for the weekend. We had a list of supplies, maps, campground picked and all, but then decided that Death Valley for a 1.5 day trip was pushing it a bit. So we couched our plans there and decided to go to Joshua Tree instead. This has been on my list for a good while so I was so excited to go.

We left Friday afternoon (work furlough day, whoot whoot) and made our way to Joshua Tree via the North entrance. We drove through the small, desolate town of Joshua Tree where my dad got a job offer at once point and thus could have been a large part of my childhood- but thanks Dad and Mom for veering away from that. We stopped at the Visitor's center and got ideas of places to hike and were on our way again. We camped at Jumbo Rock and got there with a good amount of time to pick out our perfect campsite and tramp through the desert to watch the sunset. I determined that I'm not so adventurous in the area of rock-jumping/climbing.. I'm a wussie- which cracked me up with my inability to climb down steep rocks, but David and Elizabeth were pros. That night we sat around the fire and watched stars for hours. Seriously, it was so relaxing and pleasant to be away from normal life. We were out in the middle of nowhere, not distracted by anything, and just talked and watched stars. Beautiful.

Saturday we drove out to Keys point and saw San Gorgonio, San Jacinto, San Andreas fault line, Salton sea, and Signal mountain in Mexico. And the drive up to there was neat seeing mountains that looked like giant piles of rocks, huge boulders, joushua trees and yuccas. Then we hiked at Split Rock and went up the mountain to Eagle Cliff mine where we found the mine and a house shelter thing built within the rocks. It was here that we went crazy and ate cactus, and kiwis from our lunch with the skin on. We were trying to each do 5 new things on the trip. I think we exceeded the 5. For the rest of the day we drove around and saw Arch rock, Hidden Valley, and rock climbers.

Oh- the trip was so fun and Elizabeth and David were such splendid company. Loved spending time with you guys!