Cindy and Dave's Adventures

First…I was surprised to learn that the Joshua Tree is found only in Mohave desert and roughly around the edges. I always thought they were more widespread than that. I remember from riding motorcycles as a teen in 29 Palms, that they were just there. Our campground was in the Colorado part of the Sonoran desert so we had a few Joshua’s but lots of cholla, ocotillo cacti and prickly pears everywhere. And cottonwoods of all things! The park is also fairly new and huge in area. Much bigger than we expected!

The Joshua Tree is such a weirdly adapted plant. It isn’t even a tree but a tall, trunked, yucca! The insides are tall spikes with no woody type material. We went to a homestead and saw how poorly the Joshua holds up as a fence. BTW- the Keys Ranch tour was very informative if you go to the park. Supposedly the tree was named by the Mormon immigrants because it looked like the prophet Joshua reaching his hands up to heaven. The tree can get quite tall as you can see from the pictures with Dave for reference. They were blooming while we were there, and Dave has the better pictures of those. From a distance, the flower looks like popcorn in among the leaves!

We also learned about other types of cacti in the desert, like the ocotillo and the cholla. I think the cholla is the one I fell into when I ran over Eric’s tortoise Myrtle when I was 13 years old. It was also sort of fun to see all the styles and ages of prickly pears – I guess I have only seen well paddled specimen before. The little one and two paddle plants are quite cute!

We enjoyed our time in Joshua Tree but I would suggest NOT visiting over the three day President’s weekend. It was hard to find parking at the trailheads and soooo many people everywhere! We did find a nice secluded area to hike in the Black Rock area way to the north end of the park. On the other hand, it is nice seeing people getting their kids outside and learning about conservation and nature. On to Saguaro National Park in Arizona!