On my way from La Jolla to Joshua Tree National Park I drove through a break in the mountains called San Gorgonio Pass. This is an area where wind off the Pacific moves East and creates a funnel effect. So much so that there are thousands of this huge windmills used to generate power for parts of CA. Welcome to Joshua Tree National Park. As National Parks go this one is relatively new. Much of the land was designated as National Park in 1996 by President Clinton.
The trees were called Joshua trees by the first settlers that came to this area. They thought the tree resembled Joshua raising his arms to God. You can see why they would say that from this picture. Actually these really aren't trees. They are part of the Lilly family. If you look at a cross section of the trunk you won't see rings. For that reason it is difficult to determine the age of
the Joshua trees.     Given all the National Parks I've visited to date this one was very different. Basically all desert except for these random rock formations. Millions of years ago large pockets of lava pushed upward in blobs like a huge lava lamp, because of inconsistent cooling cracks formed in the rock. Over the years erosion has cleared away the loose sand and rock exposing these previously underground formations. Today it looks as if a giant has stacked rocks on top of each other. A view from one of the mountains in the area. Unfortunately Joshua tree suffers from poor air quality. Believe it or not this is L.A. smog coming through the pass and impacting the view. They say that it's like this over 95% of the time and that a perfectly clear day is very rare. Here is a view of Palm Springs, and the San Andreas fault. Hiking in this area is very tough. There really aren't carved trails and most of the hiking is bushwhacking. Here is a view of the 4 mile hike I did on the second day. It was tons of fun just forging my way wherever it looked like I could pass. I took a different way down and some parts were pretty hairy. Several times I had to jump down 5ft or more from rock to rock. One slip and Joshua Tree would have been my last stop.   From Joshua Tree I drove to Lake Havasu across the desert. As I was leaving Joshua Tree I had about a quarter tank of gas. I thought I'd just get some on the way. Luckily just as I was leaving the town I saw a sign saying next services 100 miles. I quickly turned back and refueled.
What a cool ride. Basically it was wide open through empty desert. The road was very unusual because there were large dips that came out of nowhere. If you go too fast you could actually get your car off the ground and judging from several scrapes in the pavement it appears as if several people have done so. I had a few white knuckle "Oh Sh!@" experiences myself.
I'm also happy to say that my new radar detector just paid for itself. I was thinking I was safe being in the middle of nowhere on a weekday. However, the detector went off and I hit the breaks hard, then set the cruise to the speed limit. About a mile later a state trooper came cruising past me the other way. I couldn't help but give him a smile and a wave.
 Even though it was a little bit out of the way I couldn't possibly travel across the country without driving on Old Route 66. |
