Days Forty-Nine through Fifty-One

We are slowly moving South and West and have spent the last three days at White Tank Campground in Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree at 800,000 acres is smaller than both Death Valley and Mojave but appears much more surreal. The higher elevations we visited within the Park are alternately covered with piles of precariously stacked massive light brown boulders and forests of its namesake Joshua Trees. Joshua Tree is a favorite destination for rock climbers because of the many boulders and the Hidden Valley area is flashback to the sixties with all the longhaired kids in VW micro buses.

Joshua Tree 1

We learned from Park literature at Oasis of Mara near the Park entrance, that the many Fan Palms we had seen in the city of 29 Palms were actually native to the area. I had always assumed that they were brought to the U.S. from some exotic land. According to the Park literature there are 158 desert fan palm oases in North America with five being located in Joshua Tree National Park. The desert fan palm can live for up to ninety years and reach heights of up to seventy-five feet with leaves reaching six feet in length.

Joshua Tree 2

Thanks to Zoobley's irresistible charm, we made two new friends on our first day at Joshua Tree. After setting up camp, a couple from Europe stopped by to meet Zoobley and we ended up enjoying after dinner coffee and beers for a couple of days and getting to know each other. They came to San Francisco (He from Sweden and She from Germany) in June and after purchasing a used RV they affectionately refer to as the "Hippiemobile" have traveled throughout the Western U.S. including Alaska and Canada.We had a lot of fun comparing travel notes and laughing at the difficulties we had encountered while traveling.

Joshua Tree 3

Joshua Tree 4

Joshua Tree 5