Joshua Tree Road Trip #6

Day 8

Joshua Tree to Santa Clarita

We woke up to the hot hot weather of Joshua Tree. Our tent was nestled back between the boulders so we didn't get the direct sun first thing in the morning, but still the temperature quickly rose above 100. It made everything you did just that little bit harder to do.

This is where we slept, between two giant boulders and under a smaller one perched between the two.

The boulders were amazing, so much texture

We started packing up the truck and set the table up for some breakfast

I made an egg scramble that we had in some tortillas, and some drip coffee

It was good

Then I explored around a little bit

All around there were piles and piles of amazing boulders

You felt so small

Even with all the big stuff there were tiny tiny little cacti here and there

We left the campsite and started to head deeper into the park

We loaded up on some water first

We then drove around to one of the main entrances of the park

We stopped every now and again to check things out

There were not many people around

The trees were amazing

So Dr. Seuss like

We drove down far into the park to check out some cacti

This sign was no joke, this stuff was pokey

Someone will learn that

Even the cactus seemed like from a fantasy world

They were so fuzzy looking

 

They looked really tasty

Even dead they looked amazing

They were all around us

I gave one a hug and a kiss

Carmel tried to pretend she was sitting on one, before I could get a picture of her pretending to do so she actually sat on one. I guess it hurt.

I guess they don't like to be touched. They were so amazing though.

I guess we missed the flowers blooming by a few weeks, there were still some great little whatever these things are.

We left the cactus and ventured towards some more big boulders

This little guy was hanging out inside a crack in one of the boulders

This boulder looked like a nose

This one had a giant crack in it

So many amazing textures everywhere

They made you feel so small

Split rock, it's huge

Some boulders were sitting fairly precariously

Did I mention how small they made you feel?

This boulder looked like a well used cutting board

Some boulders had windows in them

I climbed inside of the split rock, it was actually spacious inside. You can see me at the bottom.

We then looked at some more trees

Then more boulders

Then trees again

We then made our way up to Keys View

You can almost see the salton sea

It was nice and windy up there, still hot, but at least the air was moving

There were great views of everything up there

Someone decided to ruin my self portrait

We left Keys View and explored the park some more, there was just amazing stuff everywhere

We had planned on staying in the park another night but it was just too hot and we decided to start making our way back up north a day earlier which would give us more time to explore Portland on the way home

Just after we left the park one of the tires on the truck must have had enough of all the driving and the heat because it just decided to go and explode on us. Needless to say I got the spare on and we limped to just outside Palm Springs where we were able to find a quick replacement. We then started making our way north. Our goal was to get at least north of Los Angeles and find a place to stay for the night.

It was a pretty exciting and long day. Leaving the park rather then staying for another night was actually a good plan seeing how we blew a tire. I defiantly want to go back to Joshua Tree, maybe when it's not so hot. There is so much more there that I want to explore, hopefully I can get back there fairly soon.

We ended up in Santa Clarita for the night which was not as far north as we would have like to have gotten but with the tire incident we were lucky to get at least north of Los Angeles. We got some good sleep because the next day would be one of the longest driving days we had the whole trip.