Nature’s Rock Garden: Joshua Tree National Park

We arrived at Joshua Tree National Park a day earlier and left a week later than originally planned. That’s how excited we were to visit and how much we loved this National Park. We also needed more time because a few days were so windy we couldn’t leave the camper for fear it might blow away while we were gone.

We had two very convenient home bases provided by the BLM, one 5 minutes from the southern entrance and one 20 minutes from the northern entrances of the park. Unlike the campgrounds inside which are so adorable that they sort of made us want to go tent camping again, these spots were free, didn’t require reservations, and had usable Verizon and AT&T. So thankful for the BLM!

In between these two locations, we also stayed at an RV Park in the Coachella Valley, but that will be a separate short blog post out of order.

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I got this title from a fellow RVer and UNC-CH friend, and “nature’s rock garden”, indeed. The geologic landscape is the result of two types of rock in a very restless area that have weathered at different rates for millions of years. The light-colored boulders are White Tank monzogranite that formed when volcanic magma solidified underneath another type of rock, Pinto gneiss. When the monzogranite was cooling, it cracked. Plate tectonics pushed it upward, causing further cracking. Erosion from periods of heavy rain and wind has stripped away the Pinto gneiss, exposing the monzogranite, and rounding it into boulders along those cracks.*

*We are not geologists, information was gathered on the 18 mile Geology Tour drive.

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Joshua Tree NP is comprised of two desert ecosystems, the warmer and drier Colorado at the southern entrance and the higher and cooler Mojave which you access from the north. The southern portion of the park is quieter and less visited (it’s further from LA) but still beautiful.

We also saw our first oasis of native California fan palms while hiking in the southern part of the park. These oases exist because there is seeping groundwater. There are multiple faults crossing the park where water can surface.

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Joshua Tree NP is large. From the southern entrance, it took over an hour to drive through the Pinto Basin to the area with the most popular sites, trails, huge boulders, and Joshua Trees. On the way through, you pass the Cholla Cactus Garden where thousands of Teddy bears are growing.

The namesake of the park, the Joshua Tree, is a good indication that you are in the Mojave Desert. Named by Mormon pioneers after the biblical figure, it is actually not a tree but in the Agave family. All subsequent photos were taken in the Mojave.

We drove 10 miles on a sandy road to Covington Flats to see the largest Joshua trees in the park one afternoon after work. It took an hour to drive those 10 miles one way. Regretfully, we didn’t plan enough time here to hike but we did get to catch a sunset on the way out.

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One of our favorite areas was Hidden Valley. It got its name from being popular with rustlers to hide stolen cattle. The rocks create a natural 50-acre corral with one narrow entrance. There is a mile-long path around the valley and plenty of rock climbers to stop and watch.

We also really liked the Jumbo Rocks area. The Skull Rock trail goes through this area but it’s also okay to leave the trail and play on the boulders.

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Our other favorite day in the park was exploring Rattlesnake Canyon, which we found by googling how to avoid the crowds at Joshua Tree NP. Even the sign at the trailhead said “There is no marked trail here”. Basically you rock scramble up the main wash into the canyon, and along the way would be a narrow slot with cascading vernal pools, which I had seen pictures of but Michael hadn’t so he had no idea what we were looking for. There were so many huge boulders in the wash it was impossible to follow. We might have given up if not for a mom and 10-year-old daughter doing the scramble in dresses, who pointed the way up.

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If you hike far enough up the canyon, you can reach an area called Wonderland of Rocks. We had no idea if we had made it or not so the next day we took a different approach. The Boyscout/Willow Hole trail goes to the other side via a much easier route. Although, it can be argued that hiking through a wash with deep sand is not exactly “easy”.

We hiked several other trails as well.

Our last weekend in Joshua Tree it snowed! I was hoping to see a desert dusted with snow during our trip to the Southwest and it finally happened! This was a good transition as we next headed towards higher elevations in Arizona to see the grandest of all canyons.