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Published: September 27th 2011
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Oasis in the middle of nowhere
Another morning, a goods night sleep and Steve is up early to take some pictures of the sunrise, our room faces a street with low profile Spanish style adobe buildings and for some reason it brings on a peacefulness. We get some breakfast at the motel and it's good, Steve especially likes the omellet with cheese! It's starting to get warm as we head out to the Joshua Tree National Park and we're amazed at the size of the huge rocks here, just amazing.There are Joshua Trees everywhere and there quite unusual, little skinks are running about the place and its very barren except for the Joshua Trees, which looks like a cross between a cactus and a tree! There are people rock climbing, picnicking and bike riding, seriously I don't think I would be bike riding its only 10.00am and already 89 degree Fahrenheit! Bloody hot, and it's only the start of the day! We now head off to Lake Havasau and it's a long hot drive with more desert ahead and as we drive through a landscape of great valleys of nothingness we come to a crest and as far
The Road ahead
A stretch of road driving from Twenty Nine Palms to Lake Havasu as you can see the road stretches ahead with heat hazes shimmering and reflecting off the roads surface. We look at these valleys from the rises and you can imagine them vegetated and green with dinosaurs roaming with giant Pterodactyl flying overhead, incredible.
Once we hit the town of Parker it all starts to change, there are jet ski's & speed boats on the back of cars and pick ups everywhere and all of a sudden as we venture into Lake Havasau it starts to look like Lake Epoloch (
Vic,Aust) except the water is blue, there is a golf course and RV's on the Horizon, its just amazing, here we are out in the middle of the desert and yet there is this amazing blue water lake and green grass! We arrive at our Motel, by this stage its 108 degree and we can't wait to get into our room with the air-conditioner, Mmmm, the air-conditioner is on but the room doesn't seem to be getting any cooler, may'be they've just turned it on before we arrived. We decide to go and have a cool drink at the bar and as we walk in the door I notice a
sign that reads,
No Firearms allowed on premise, "what the"?. I'm thinking, what the hell place is this..... anyway we go and have our cool drink or two and then make our way back to our room and its still warm, maybe its because we are on the sunny side. Its getting hotter & hotter, we go down for dinner at the motel restaurant and on the way through the bar, there is a country band playing and two couples dancing the Texas Two Step, "no Steve we are not stopping for a dance", you know your dancing skills are limited! Back to our room, omg........ could it be any hotter, by this stage I'm like a lobster! Steve rings the front desk to find out why the internet is down and mentions the air-conditioner, a young maintenance man comes up to our room and could not apologize enough, the condenser had gone on the air-conditioner, so Steve said to the guy, "thank god, I thought he was being a girl as we come from Australia we should be able to handle the heat", They moved us to another room and as I open the door I start to laugh,
Entrance to Joshua Tree park
Joshua Tree’s nearly 800,000 acres were set aside to protect the unique assembly of natural resources brought together by the junction of three of California’s ecosystems. The Colorado Desert, a western extension of the vast Sonoran Desert, occupies the southern and eastern parts of the park. It is characterized by stands of spike-like ocotillo plants and “jumping” cholla cactus. The southern boundary of the Mojave Desert reaches across the northern part of the park. It is the habitat of the park’s namesake: the Joshua tree. Extensive stands of this peculiar looking plant are found in the western half of the park. Joshua Tree’s third ecosystem is located in the western most part of the park above 4,000 feet. The Little San Bernardino Mountains provide habitat for a community of California juniper and pinyon pine.
The plant diversity of these three ecosystems is matched by the animal diversity, including healthy herds of desert bighorn and six species of rattlesnakes. Joshua Tree National Park lies astride the Pacific flyway of migratory birds, and is a rest stop for many. It was for this unusual diversity of plants and animals that Joshua Tree National Monument was set aside on August 10, 1936. it has two double beds and Steve is standing there with a sad look on his face, I don't know about him, but I had the best night sleep!....... weather – very bloody hot!
Accommodation: Quality Inns and Suites
271 S Lake Havasu Ave
Lake Havasu City, Arizona
Thoughts: Clean room, close to London Bridge(10 min walk), as far as the eating in at this quality Inn, it's not that great.
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