Spring 2023 California Saga, 3.21.23 - 4.9.23, Part 3 of 8, Joshua Tree National Park

Feeling like we had an excellent sampling of Anza-Borrego State Park, it was now time to move on to the second phase of the 2023 California Saga. Joshua Tree National Park is only a bit over two hours to the northeast from Anza-Borrego. I have wanted to go to this park for many years. The tales of Gram Parsons, the title and photo of U2’s finest album and the various photos I have seen all intrigued me and kept me thinking about paying this national park a visit.

Even the drive from Anza-Borrego to Joshua Tree was interesting. Having never been in this entire area before, I was fascinated by the extended badlands east of Anza-Borrego, the drive along the Salton Sea, passing by huge groves of date palms and driving through Coachella, site of the now legendary annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Fair.

We arrived in the town of Yucca Valley and drove into Black Rock Campground. This campground is reservable which is why we stayed there but it is a bit more removed than some of the other campgrounds in the park that were either already full when I made reservations or only had first come, first serve sites. It is also a bit more rustic which turned out to be a plus in our eyes. There was no entry gate, no paved roads, not even any signs saying which way the site loops were laid out. We had to Google a site map just to figure out where Site 46 was. It turned out to be up on a hill and not very level but we used all our blocks to get as level as we could. Of course there were no hookups but we are pretty self-sustaining when dry camping. The cool thing about Black Rock is that it is in the middle of the forest. It’s like a national forest campground only instead of pine trees we were completely surrounded by huge Joshua trees. Actually not even a tree, Joshua trees are succulent yucca with flowering blooms. As luck would have it, the Joshua trees were blooming during our stay there.

Surrounding the campground were rocky hills covered with all sorts of cacti and yucca and lots of Joshua trees. Several trails emanated from the campground itself but I found that it was also not difficult to just wander through the hills above our camp. After setting up I took a walk up into the surrounding hills and just marveled at the variety of plant life. Barrel Cactus, Prickly Pear, Teddybear Cholla, Silver Cholla are just some of the supposed fifteen species of cactus. Lots of other plants like Creosote and Ocotillo, various types of yucca, palms and Joshua trees dotted the hillsides. I love the desert.

**Our campsite at Black Rock Campground**

**Joshua Tree above Black Rock Campground**

That evening was extra special. My sister Arinna and brother in law Andy live in Redondo Beach, just a few hours from Joshua Tree. With Covid and all, we hadn’t seen them since 2017. When I suggested they come out to hang with us in Joshua Tree, they got right on it and got a room in Yucca Valley. We met up with them for dinner and hashed out some plans for the next two days.

In the morning as usual I got up to watch the sun rise. As the sun broke the horizon it lit up the rocky hills above our camp. If I looked directly into the sun through a cholla cactus, the needles would light up and the entire plant seemed to glow.

We met up with Arinna and Andy at the local grocery store in the morning. After buying some sandwiches for lunch we piled into their car and drove to the west entrance of the park aptly called Park Avenue. Taking the scenic way through the park, the sights along the way were outstanding. I guess if you don’t like Joshua trees or rocks it might not do it for you but I thought it all looked incredible.

First we drove through a huge forest of Joshua trees. These trees don’t grow super close together but more scattered loosely with space between them. It sort of reminded me of an African savannah and I half expected to see a giraffe or something. Soon we began to see mountains of rocks. The rocks were more like massive jumbles of smooth granite boulders piled up and full of jagged pinnacles, crevices and cracks. One of the first really nice piles of rock was a spot called Hemingway. This was a long massive wall of rock and very picturesque. It occurred to me that this would be a great spot to shoot sunrise photos due to the angle of the northeast facing wall. Another area called Hidden Valley had an amazing array of rock on both sides of the road. I had read that Hidden Valley was one of the most beautiful areas in the park. Jumbo Rocks has its own campground and we drove through the main loop just to check it out. A lot of the sites were actually just small pullouts on the edge of the road and didn’t look that appealing. The entire drive though was through big piles of rocks and though we didn’t explore the little side roads, I guessed that these held some amazing sites tucked into the rocks.

We eventually got to Pinto Basin Road and followed that down to the Cholla Cactus Garden Loop. This was about an hour and fifteen minutes from Yucca Valley and the farthest point in the park we would visit. The parking lot was already full but it didn’t take long at all before someone left and we nabbed a spot. I figured this short quarter mile loop trail would just have various types of cactus on display like a normal cactus garden but it was all about the Cholla here. I don’t know what it was, but these Cholla seemed bigger, taller, beefier and more fluffy if you can possibly associate fluffy with infinite little daggers of pain. Even though the trail was short, it was okay to go off trail and wander away from the other people. You had to be extremely careful though. There’s a reason these little buggers have the nickname of “jumping Cholla”. Get anywhere close to one of these bad boys and the spiky Cholla balls almost seem to leap onto your clothes or skin. Once imbedded they are very difficult to remove. The best way is to bring a comb and a pair of tweezers. We saw a guy who was taking part in a group photo rub up against one and had more than a few stuck to his arm. And it’s not just to the sides. Some fall on the ground just waiting for you to kick it with your foot which would be an instant shoe sticker.

But scary stories aside, these were incredibly beautiful specimens of Cholla Cacti. It was still reasonably early and if you looked anywhere eastward they glowed in the sun. I found that shooting into the sun was even better than the sunlit sides and using my telephoto really narrowed down the field of focus for some great results. An added bonus was that they all had big green buds and looked like they would bloom any day.

The Cholla Cactus Garden would be incredible at sunrise, but it was a long drive from where we were camped so I never took advantage of that idea.

Once we had our fill at the Cholla Cactus garden we drove back up Pinto Basin Road to the Arch Rock Loop. This lot was also full and took a bit longer to get a spot. This trail started out by following and then crossing over the road, crossing a broad flat towards a large jumble of rocks and then coming to a split. By going counter-clockwise, we shortly came to the namesake arch. It had quite a few people crawling all over it and taking selfies but I waited patiently and finally got a brief moment where no one was in my frame. Near the arch was a really nice section of beautiful rock that looked like it would be a fun place to just crawl around and explore.

The specific points of interest on the park map like Arch Rock and Cholla Cactus Garden draw the vast majority of the visitors to this park, but looking around it seemed to me that there were hundreds of really cool places to explore where you wouldn’t see anyone else by just picking some cool rock formation and heading off-trail to get to it.

After stopping for lunch at Split Rock Picnic Area, we drove to Skull Rock. This rock formation, clearly looking like a skull, was right off the road and crawling with people. We started down a trail but it was a little too rough for Arinna so while Bridgit, Andy and Arinna headed back towards the car, Andrew and I decided to circumnavigate Skull Rock. Skull Rock is actually part of the Jumbo Rocks area and we really enjoyed our little adventure. At one point we tried dropping down to get back to the road but it was a bit of a dead end in some car sized boulders so we climbed back up and went further around until we found our way back to the road.

Once we finished exploring Skull Rock we were done for the day so they dropped us back at our Jeep and we headed back to camp. The Joshua trees seemed to be blooming almost fast enough to see. I could swear the blooms got bigger just in the few days we were there.

On our second and last day with Arinna and Andy we hit several spots we didn’t have time for the first day. Our first stop was to a trail that led to a place called the Hall of Horrors. How could you possibly not want to explore something with a name like that? My research had told me that the Hall of Horrors was a fairly short but fun slot crack and that it wasn’t that easy to find. I had directions and a photo screenshot so off we went to the second set of boulders out from the parking area. It was quiet and pretty out there. Hiking through a nice forest of scattered Joshua trees, we reached the second set of boulders. The slot was supposed to be near the southwest corner but I could find nothing that resembled the screen shot and certainly didn’t see any kind of entrance to a crack or slot. We decided to head back and try again since it wasn’t that far.

On our way back we realized the error of our ways. The first jumble of rocks was actually two jumbles and in short order we found the southwest side and spotted where the entrance to the slot would be. We climbed up through some rocks to reach the entrance. Bridgit and I began to head into it but the crack got extremely narrow right away. She decided to bail on it but I thought I’d have a go. Within several feet I had to turn sideways and got to a point where it was questionable as to whether I’d fit through. As I tried to suck it in and squeeze through, in the narrowest part, my belt buckle popped and my telephoto lens in the case dropped to the ground right at my feet. Hmm. There was no possible way I was going to be able to bend over to get it. With one last effort I managed to pop through the crack to a slightly wider spot on the other side. From there I was able to retrieve my lens. There were a couple of spots in Spooky Gulch down in the Escalante area of southern Utah that reminded me of this. Now that I was through the narrow spot I was hoping to get all the way through the Hall of Horrors, pop out the other side and hike around to meet back up with the others. Maybe ten feet further, I came to another spot, even narrower than the previous one. I was trapped. I was about a quarter pounder too big to get any further and I certainly didn’t like the idea of going back the way I’d just come. I’d just die here in the Hall of Horrors and some lucky skinny guy or gal would find a free telephoto lens. With not many options left to me and my pride riding on the line, I somehow managed to get back through the first tight stretch and with a tear in my eye and a sigh of relief I soon joined back up with the others.

**The rocks that weren’t the Hall of Horrors**

**Bridgit at the point of bailing in the Hall of Horrors**

**A fine Joshua tree on the trail to the Hall of Horrors**

With a new lease on life, we left the Hall of Horrors and went to have lunch at the Cap Rock picnic area. Afterwards we hiked the short Cap Rock Loop which was nothing special and then proceeded to Hidden Valley.

The Hidden Valley Loop was only a mile but felt like longer. We all found it to be incredibly scenic. After a brief climb through some rocks we came to a fork that looked down into Hidden Valley. We opted to go clockwise, The trail worked its way around a long rock wall. Several climbers were working the wall with ropes. We dropped down and made our way to the far end of the valley before looping around and slowly ascending back up to the viewpoint. This valley had lots and lots of rock. Walls, piles, pinnacles, it had it all. I think just after sunrise would be a really nice time to photograph all the rock here.

Hidden Valley was our last outing as a group. Andy and Arinna were off the next morning to other places and we still had one more day to explore. Once we got back to our camp we had the rest of the afternoon to relax.

We had one more day in Joshua Tree so we decided to take a Jeep trip to an area most of the visitors don’t go. The day dawned with ominous clouds and it was pretty cold. I had expected this based on the forecast so it was a good day to be in the warm confines of the Jeep.

We left camp around nine and drove back down Highway 62 towards Indio. Turning off onto Dillon Road, some twenty-five miles later we turned left onto Berdoo Canyon Road. The first part of this road was just another rocky, gravelly road that went past a shooting range but after a mile or so we left everyone else behind and made our way into Berdoo Canyon.

The road was pretty rough with lots of rocks and washouts. I didn’t air down for this one but of all the roads we drove on this trip, this should have been the one to air down for. There were numerous tracks heading up the canyon and several times we had to back up to take a better option. The flowers were actually quite nice in this canyon, maybe the best flowers we saw in Joshua Tree.

As we drove further the road became even more challenging. Typical of canyons, the walls started getting higher and the roadbed (really just a wash) got narrower and rougher. There was one section we came to that was easily the toughest bit of road I’d driven our Jeep on and the toughest bit of driving I’d done since the old days of driving out to the Maze District of Canyonlands in my first 4Runner. It wasn’t that long a stretch, but at one spot we faced about a two foot high rock step in a turn with big rocks on either side. In 4WD I picked my line and slowly climbed up the rock step and around the corner. Once again I sure wish I had a video of that little stretch. Bridgit had never done anything quite so challenging in a vehicle before and was hugely impressed not just with my ability to negotiate this spot, but also the capability of what the Jeep can handle. Once safely beyond the crux move, she decided that it was quite fun and exhilarating. She truly enjoys Jeeping as long as there is not a lot of exposure involved.

The entire Berdoo Canyon road is about thirteen miles long. As we climbed out of the canyon we began to gain a decent bit of altitude. It was cool climbing from one zone of lowland desert to a much higher almost alpine zone full of Joshua trees. We finally topped out onto a high ridge. We were probably around 4,500’ (Black Rock sits at 4,000’). After topping out we followed the road another mile or so until we connected up to what is known as The Geology Tour Road. This was still a bit of a rough road but a lot smoother than Berdoo Canyon. We drove it north until we came to the paved Park Avenue and drove back to Black Rock. Along the way it began to rain and the wind was really whipping up. Temperatures dropped to the forties but with the wind it felt much colder. We even got an alert text from the park about a high wind warning with gusts as high as 40 mph. I was going to drive up to Eureka Peak for sunset but first of all, it didn’t look like the sky would be clear enough and second of all, it was just too damn cold and windy to go anywhere.

Meanwhile, I did some new research and got bad news. Mono Lake was still getting snowstorm after snowstorm. Highway 395 north of Lone Pine was in chain effect and 395 was flat out closed north of Lee Vining. We still had a week but decided even if the road opened, the whole Mono Lake idea would be cold, snowy and not too great.

Another part of that plan was to go to the Alabama Hills. I looked on the map and if we could have gotten there we could still drive south from there, go around the Sierras to Bakersfield and come home on I-5. But a call to the Eastern Sierra Visitor Center brought even more bad news. Movie Road, which is the main access to the Alabama Hills was closed due to flooding. At this point I threw in the towel and decided that after Death Valley we would just head home. No Alabama Hills, no Mono Lake and no Harry’s house. The Mono Lake thing didn’t bother me too much but I really wanted to see the Alabama Hills. Oh well, we figured if we had a great time in Anza-Borrego, Joshua Tree and hopefully Death Valley it would still have been a great trip.

Spring 2023 California Saga, 3.21.23 - 4.9.23, Part 3 of 8, Joshua Tree National Park

Spring 2023 California Saga, 3.21.23 - 4.9.23, Part 2 of 8, Anza-Borrego State Park(Con’t)

Spring 2023 California Saga, 3.21.23 - 4.9.23, Part 4 of 8, Death Valley National Park