There’s always been an intriguing draw for me to get to Joshua Tree NP. From pictures and descriptions, I just knew it’d be an interesting place unlike anything we’d ever seen before. We chose to camp on the southern boundary of the park since they are at peak season and getting a spot in the park was not going to happen.

Chiriaco Summit is a small family-run oasis community. Even though there is only a gas station and small cafe at this exit, you could sense the hospitality exuding from the people working there. We set up at the free Dry Camp right behind the General Patton Memorial Museum, the full timer there welcomed us and got us “registered” since we were planning on staying more than one night. (This was more of a place for people passing through but welcomed weary travelers for up to seven days as well.)

Our first foray into Joshua Tree was a stop at the Cholla Cactus Garden right about sunset on the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday week (it was quite busy). There were a lot of “influencer” type photo shoots happening and it felt as though we had truly arrived in California 🤣🌵💃🏽

The garden itself was fascinating. Just miles upon miles of this one species of cactus. It whet our appetite for what was to come with the other desert foliage.

The next venture in, we planned on a whole day. From our southern location you had to cross the Colorado desert into the Mojave and drive about 40miles into the park to start to see the Joshua Trees. That’s been an interesting take out here in the dirt, I thought a desert was a desert, but you could actually see the terrain transform crossing these two distinct planes.

The most popular and highest elevation hike, Ryan Mountain, was suggested to us by a ranger so we started our adventuring there. It was a steep climb up, about a 1000ft elevation gain in 1 1/2 miles. We are out of condition for high elevation hikes like this! But we persisted and made it to the top for the 360° views. After that we made our way to a picnic area and a lot of roadside pullouts featuring rock formations and Joshua trees. We didn’t make it to the northern most part of the park because we thought we’d approach it from another entry point later in the week but that plan fell through. We still saw a lot though and were super happy to check it off our must see parks list.

The third full day spent in the park was on the southern end and a longer hike called Lost Palms Oasis. We hiked to just what the trail was called, some lost palms settled into a wash that someone must have planted for relief from the desert heat who knows how long ago. Camden was in high gear on this hike, a surprising development for the day, he had been expecting some scrambling and rock climbing the whole time so he was in a hurry on this hike. It was the fastest pace we’d ever done 7 miles in, just under 3 hours! From the end of this trail, the boys decided to bushwhack down an old canyon and waterfall that fed basically right back to our camp, that satisfied his want for an challenge. Us girls went from where we came to retrieve the car. We got home early and rested for the remainder of the day, after ice cream of course.