Day: January 19, 2010

We stayed at a hotel near Joshua Tree Park and in the morning began the drive to San Diego. We passed huge farms of windmills along the way.

I HAD to stop in Palm Springs since that is where my mother went last year to watch tennis and she talks about it a lot.

Oddly enough, it was raining when we drove into this desert oasis town. There were lots of palm trees and a huge mountain towering over the little community.

We stopped and ate at Joe’s sushi and then walked down the main street a bit. Then, since it’s no fun in Palm Springs when it’s cold and rainy, we hit the road.

We decided to follow the Bodeswell family on a longer drive past a large salt-water lake and through the mountains. Apparently the lake was made after a large dam was built by a developer. But the lake turned out to be salty and it didn’t quite draw crowds.

After the lake, we drove through a different kind of dessert with flowering plants and little rock canyons which experience flash flooding.

Further on, it started raining. And then it rained more. We expected this turn in the weather, but were still glad to arrive in San Diego around dinner time.

We drove through a lot of desert after leaving Lake Havascu, most of it in California. I felt like we were hardly moving. Even in this bare landscape, there was graffiti made with wood and stones.

We arrived at a town called Twenty-nine Palms and turned to enter Joshua Tree Park.

We were still travelling with the Bodeswells and they wanted to take a picture of a Joshua Tree just like the on the U2 album cover, but we couldn’t remember what it looked like. So we took a picture of the coolest Joshua Tree we could find.

Morgane had a scavenger hunt to do for her junior ranger badge and we found a lot of evidence of life – around every plant were different sized burrows where snakes, kangaroo rats or large spiders might live. I’m glad to say they were all sleeping or hibernating at the time.

Our next stop in the park was to check out the amazing rock formations. The kids loved it and they could squeeze through little cracks and crevices, but I found it difficult and the rock really hurt my fingers. Angela got a nasty scrape when she was helping the kids get down.

Stop number three was to admire the view over the valley where Palm Springs sits. It was cold and windy, but we had a good view despite a few ominous clouds.

After that we appreciated the park only from inside our van. We drove past many more rock formations and hillsides covered with Joshua trees before we exited the park. Morgane got her gold junior ranger badge. They even liked the fact that she had invented a new desert animal: the dogadillo who lives in a prickly cactus doghouse and eats catmice.