We woke up to the sun coming up outside our window. Such a different view from the morning before when we saw the beach. This morning, there were palm trees, desert scrub brush, and mountains on the horizon.
We ate a tasty breakfast in town, and then headed out to explore on our way to Joshua Tree National Park. Just outside of Barriga Springs is Sky Metal Art Sculptures. They are really cool. You can see them around, drive up to them, bike to them, and explore. There is the dragon/serpent that stretches across the road, appearing to dip above and below the ground. You can see Jeremy and I at the tail with the head in the distance. Then, there were tons of other sculptures – over 130 total! – we did not see them all. Here is a good website if you want to explore it more.
On our way to Joshua Tree we passes acres and acres of date palm trees. There is the Salton Sea (see it in the distance in the pic on the left) which was formed in the early 1900s when the Colorado River burst through poorly constructed irrigation canals. The run-off from all the agriculture in this area continues to feed this body of water. It is not a healthy system right now. In fact, they say to try to fix it would be one of the most expensive and largest water project in North America since the Hoover Dam. You can read more about it here. We also drove through some unique canyon areas.
We made it to Joshua Tree by about 1pm. Because Ellie is a fourth grader, we can get a year pass to the National Parks for free. It is a super cool program (and very easy to do). The first stop was the Cholla Cactus Garden. These are a unique cactus (one of many species in the park) that are congregated in this area, but can be seen other places in the park as well. There is a path to walk through the area.
Then, we stopped to see Skull Rock – aptly named. This is in an area of rocks that you can just climb around on forever. We had fun just running from rock to rock. It would be easy to get lost if you weren’t careful though because while there is technically a trail, it is very hard to see where it goes.
We stopped at one spot to get some pictures with the park’s namesake – the Joshua Tree. It is an interesting tree. The “leaves” are pretty spiky and kinda hurt if you bump up against them. They have weird limbs and just an odd shape. You can learn more here if you want.
Jeremy wore his U2 Joshua Tree shirt to the park to be most authentic!
The view from the rocks near this grove of trees was expansive.
Our last hike of the day, we took the Barker Dam trail. It was about a 1.5 mile loop with some cave paintings at one point. The interesting and disappointing story about these paintings is that back in the day Walt Disney was filming a movie here, found the paintings, decided they weren’t vibrant enough… so HE PAINTED OVER THEM. Not all of them, but you can certainly tell the originals from the updated ones. I guess, either way it is pretty cool to see them either way.
As we rounded the corner at the end of the trail, we were tired. We had decided to just give up watching the sunset – something that is supposed to be pretty spectacular – because we were just too beat. However, as I waited with the girls for Jeremy to get the car (maybe a 1/4 mil away), we were given an amazing show!
This is a view when I turned around of the moon rising over the Joshua Tree and the sky being tinged by the setting sun. It was breathtaking.
It continued to get more fire-y as the minutes passed.
We drove away from that remote beauty and headed to Anaheim – a 15 minute walk to our next destination, Disneyland.
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