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Published: April 24th 2011
Going it alone Joshua Tree After such a long drive to Twenty-nine Palms on Good Friday, I took it easy on the Saturday. I was very relaxed and happy – even though I again had to share the breakfast room with families. Spring break seems to go on for ever in the USA. Some schools had their Spring Break about a month ago, but all the Christain faith schools are apparently having theirs at Easter.
I loaded my cooler with bottles of water, my lunch and snacks – all this photography is thirsty and hungry work. It was about 11 when I got to Joshua Tree Park. The visitor centre was, as they always are, a mine of useful information. The ranger was really lovely, telling me exactly where to go for spring blooms, Joshua Trees in bloom, nature trails. I asked him the best way to San Diego via the most scenic route for Sunday – and he planned my entire trip – cafes, vineyards, another park to visit for Spring Blooms. He was such a sweet old boy. The queue behind me was getting restless, well they just shouldn’t come to the park when I need information.
Joshua Tree National Park encompasses parts of two deserts, the Mojave and the Colarado Deserts. The Mojave is the most northerly and cooler of the two deserts, the term cooler being relative, because I still wore my factor 30 sun lotion – and needed to be wearing it. It is the Mojave desert part of the Joshua Tree Park that contains the yucca brevifolia or Joshua Tree – the plant that gave the park its name. There are several signs advising tourists not to confuse the Joshua Tree with the Mojave Yucca – apparently a close relative. To me they looked nothing alike – the Joshua Tree looking like a tree, and the Mojave Yucca looking like a houseplant – a bit like a hairy Australian Palm. The native Indians found the plant to be immensely useful and used it in a multitude of ways. The Mormon pioneers decided it resembled the prophet Joshua. No photographs exist of Josh, but I am sure he is flattered by having his torso likened to a spiky, twisted, gnarled plant. As I keep saying, Mormons are lovely people, they just need to drink a bit more.
Thanks to the ranger’s advice,
the Mojave desert area was where I was to spend my day, surrounded by small, spiky things … I felt so at home. Having been to Death Valley in search of Spring blooms, and ended up scrabbling over rocks and scrubland just to photo the few blooms still there, I had little idea of the greenery and blooms in Joshua Tree. Apart from both kinds of yucca, there are prickly pear and other cacti, desert oak trees, California juniper, creosote bush and Manzanita – which has fruit resembling tiny little apples.
There were flowers everywhere when I first entered the park. I tried not to stand on any, feeling that they had gone to so much effort to survive in the desert, they deserved not to have my Teva flip flops stomp on them. It did occur to me that in a desert with snakes possibly lurking in the undergrowth, flip flops were not the ideal footwear, but they have pink trim and went very nicely with my top, snakes respect that kind of attention to detail.
As in Sequoia, most vehicles seemed to be rushing to key attractions, leaving me to faff around taking endless photos of
the flowers and trees. One small family of hikers walked past, at least 10 feet apart and nobody talking to each other. As they walked past, the mother saw the blooms I was photographing. “Isn’t that a pretty flower Bailey” she called to her daughter. Bailey said nothing. I looked up – Bailey was about 10, kitted out in full hiking gear similar to her parents (must have been hot in that heat) and her little face looked like thunder. I sympathized, school holidays spent at HMS Victory or bloody Birdworld were for my parents, never for us. They thought we would and should enjoy it, we wondered why they couldn’t just leave us to create havoc in the garden. In fact I have seen many children in my travels round these parks, and the parents are amazed the kids aren’t more entertained, the younger ones are generally cold or hot and whiny and the older ones just look mutinous. Parents – the money you would have spent on your kids, spend on a babysitter and leave them at home, just go yourselves and enjoy the scenery and the tranquility.
Joshua Tree had tranquility in spades. I was so
happy, just wandering about the desert, photographing everything that grew, moved or eroded . It was so quiet that when a bird flew slowly over my head, I could actually hear its wings flap. As I watched a pocket gopher feed on a plant I could hear it eating. Whilst I wandered about the Barker Dam enjoying the peace and the tranquility, I could hear every irritating word two other women said, no matter how far away they were.
Yapping tourists aside, the tranquility was like free Prozac with no side effects. Nothing mattered, the world outside the park didn’t exist. I had planned to tour the northern Park for 2 hours or so and then go to a Western film set a few miles away. I was in the Park for over 7 hours and hardly noticed the time. It is hard to believe that all those cowboys were so mean in such tranquil settings. The tranquility even helped me forget that the irritating little cretin formerly known as Bono once released an album called Joshua Tree, I wasn’t going to let the cretinous one ruin my enjoyment of the Park. (By the way, in case you are
vlh 230411 JT05 more flowers
I like flowers - and you don't get this kind of show every Spring, appreciate it!interested, a cretin is a senile dwarf, therefore a most appropriate term).
Like all National Parks, Joshua Tree is really well laid out – information boards abound at key points plenty of roads for those who like to drive, plenty of trails for those who like to walk, plenty of untapped desert for the lunatics who like to go it alone blazing their own trail. There is even rock-climbing for the Pepsi Max generation. All types are catered for. I read everything, every question I had formed in my mind whilst looking at trees, flowers and rocks was answered somewhere. The rocks were fascinating – huge tumbling boulders, balanced against each other. Some were perfectly split and slightly set apart. Others looked as though they had been split and a rogue trader builder had been round with polyfilla and filled them in. The boards inform that the majority of this erosion is caused by water. Where molten rock came along later and pushed into existing crevaces, it forms the bodge job polyfilla effect. Next time you get ripped off by a builder, just console yourself with the thought that it has taken millions of years of erosion and evolution
to get that effect.
After wandering around amongst the spring flowers, I went for a short walk around Split Rock – which you will be surprised to hear is a really big rock that has split, surrounded by lots of fallen boulders and other split rocks. It is also a picnic ground so I was surrounded by families – I love my family, I am just not so keen on other people’s, it is why I won’t marry again, I can’t cope with in-laws (that and the fact that nobody will ask me, but that is a minor detail). Then I went to Desert Oak – an oak that has adapted to life in the desert, it wasn’t as pretty as the Spring Flowers, and other people having a picnic made me want to have my picnic, so I did. On my travels with Ursula, it was so cold, we had most of our picnics in the car, it was lovely to sit in the sun on a warm day and enjoy my lunch. I let the tranquility of the park wash over me and drown out the noise of the picknicking families. I would like to think that
if I had children, I would have still been able to appreciate the beauty of the desert and not stand around discussing the best brand of babies’ nappies, but I don’t have children so I can’t judge.
I stopped off at Skull Rock – a rock that looks like a skull. Children were climbing all over it whilst their doting parents took photos. Sometimes on my travels people do offer to take photos of me and the scenery, I always decline, I don’t want pictures of me … but neither do I want pictures of them, so I tapped my foot impatiently whilst I waited for all the children to get off my scenery. Then I went for a climb up the rocks to see the view. A tourist coming down informed me I would have difficulty in my slippers. Slippers! Teva flip-flops matey, not slippers. My “slippers” had far less trouble than his trainers, but I smiled sweetly and thanked him. Desert Prozac – they should just bottle it.
As I pottered about the desert, I looked carefully for the Joshua Trees in bloom. The helpful ranger had marked on the map where I should find them.
vlh 230411 JT08 broken walls
molten rock pushed into crevaces of monzogranite - or bodged builders' work. I looked at every Joshua tree within that area, wandering about the scrub killing the little flowers that had fought so hard just to grow. I gave up before there was more flower carnage. Seeing the Joshua Trees in bloom is still to be experienced by me, but future generations will thank me for not trampling on every single flower in the Park.
I went up to Keys View from which, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Mexico, however today was not a clear day. The view was still worth the trip up there. This being another major attraction in the Park, I had to share the view with other people – but not so many that it could spoil the tranquility. The haze is caused by a combination of moisture in the air and pollution. As the ranger explained to us in the Grand Canyon, the Colorado river and plateau attract pollution and fog like a magnet.
My last stop in the Park was the nature trail at Barker Dam. The information board advised an hour for the 1 mile trail. I doubted I would be that long – I was in
fact about 80 minutes, it wasn’t strenuous, it was just amazing. There were lots of little birds, I could hear them all in the trees, and occasionally caught sight of one, but rarely for long enough to get a photo. With most wildlife in the Parks, I have realized that I can enjoy watching them, or miss them entirely whilst I try and photo them, so you should really go and see them for yourself.
I came across a very camera aware pocket gopher who repeatedly came out of his little hidey-hole to chomp on flowers. I watched him for ages, I photographed him and video’d him, he was really entertaining. The noisy ladies turned up again, I pointed to the gopher, one of them whispered to me that it was a gerbil, she had seen some words on a board that said there were some kind of creatures, but she hadn’t read it so was pretty sure it was a gerbil. I replied that I had read the ‘words’ and it was most probably a pocket gopher. She looked at the pocket gopher. She looked at me. She then informed me that it was probably a gerbil. Desert
Prozac me smiled sweetly, and went back to looking at the pocket gopher. Somewhere deep inside my head, waiting for the menopause to weave its magic and take over from the Desert Prozac, the real me screamed at her ‘it’s a f***ing pocket gopher, you brain dead trollope’.
Happy day.
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Eric Eggen
non-member comment
Joshua Tree
This is the best review of Joshua Tree National Park I have ever seen. It makes me want to see it, especially in the Spring. Your blog is very, very good. Thank you.