This place is truly magical. The West entrance, and the town of Joshua Tree are only an hour’s drive from Palm Springs but it felt like travelling back in time a few centuries…
A day ticket for the park is $25 and you can buy it at the gate from the Rangers.
The name Joshua tree was given by a group of Mormon settlers who crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. The tree’s unique shape reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer.
These days it is a world renown climbing place too… although we just did ‘scrambling’…
and pretend climbing one foot off the ground…
We didn’t have too much time so we only did one walk: ‘Hidden Valley’ and it was quite spectacular. A very easy 1 mile loop (it’s hot… take lots of water with you), well signposted and with interesting signs explaining about he flora and fauna of the area.
We then drove across the park to the Cholla garden…
They are also known as the Teddy bear cactus or the jumping cactus… but they’re neither… they might look soft and cuddly but the spines are totally vicious and will attached to anything that brushes past them even lightly and are really hard to remove.
But they’re beautiful in the fading sunset light…
truly magical.
(although, between you and me… they’re kind of spooky too… you can totally imagine them moving about and attacking campers as soon as the sun goes down! Very Stephen King, if you know what i mean)
while you're ahead... 