The scenery was certainly taking on a different appearance now – we had left the coast behind us and were heading into the desert. We were met with long straight highways through rocky plains, along with plenty of scrub and rocky mountains. We arrived in Twenty Nine Palms – a small town just outside Joshua National Park, and pulled up to our hotel. The reception was decked out as a Western-style hotel but our accommodation was a lovely self contained unit complete with a dog turd under the bed (quickly dealt with) and an organ piano – Moose was in heaven and played it every opportunity he got. We dropped off our things at the hotel and headed straight for the park for a quick visit before the sun went down. We bought an annual pass at the entrance which then allowed us free entry into a number of other national parks – including the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce – all of which would come in useful over the next few weeks. But for now, back to the hotel for dinner.
In the morning we headed back to the park in search of the Cholla Cactus Garden walking trail. After the 30 minute drive there, we didn’t make it out of the carpark before Moose got a splinter on the wooden hand rail. Despite our best efforts with the first aid kit in the car, we couldn’t get it out and so turned around and went back to the hotel. It came out easily with a proper pair of tweezers and some well timed distraction. Here was when the weather stopped going our way….a dust storm blew in with strong winds and very poor visibility. That ruled out going back to the park that day and we hunkered down in the hotel….where the power went out…
The next morning the power had returned and the storm had cleared so we headed back to the park. This time we were in search of Arch Rock trail. After some dubious signage and a false start in the wrong direction, we found Arch Rock and were blown away by the rock formations. Moose was really excited and did a fantastic job climbing and jumping around on the rocks. After Arch Rock we hopped back in the car and headed on to Skull Rock, for some more climbing. After this we raced down to Keys View lookout before the sun went down. We arrived, dealt with an impressive nappy blowout, then rugged up and braved the 5 degree, windy weather to get some photos then retreat back to the warmth of the car to defrost our fingers and head back to the hotel.
The next morning we set off to Phoenix to meet up with Seb’s dad who would be joining us for the next two weeks of our trip.