Hey Actifitters,
I wasn't sure which cover photo to use for our first day hiking in Joshua Tree National Park yesterday, but I figured I should simply use a joshua tree photo. It is its namesake after all!
But that is definitely not the only thing we saw. Even though we didn't want to be too aggressive with the schedule, especially after my race the night before, we had plenty of small to medium hikes in mind. We started with a very easy one at Cholla Cactus Garden. It's just a flat loop, barely a quarter mile long. Perfect to warm up before a full day of hiking. Obviously its main feature is a lot of cholla cactuses! With some nice desert views in the background.
I didn't know this type of cactus, it looks pretty cool.
That was a very quick one and we went to Heart and Arch Rock trail next. It's another short one, but you can make it more challenging with a little scrambling on the rock formations.
Guess you can easily figure out how they got their respective names.
We walked past the Arch and continued for a bit, scrambling and checking different small paths around the main trail.
We still had several spots to visit and the next one was Split Rock trail.
Again, lots of weird and beautiful rock formations, lots of rocks in this park!
I'm still not sure why it's called Split Rock, maybe because many of these big rocks had these visible strata. I'll have to check some day.
For the next one, I don't even think it was on our original list, but when we saw the sign from the road, we thought 'why not?'. It was another rock: Skull Rock, and you can once again easily guess why this name.
Even more possibilities for scrambling on this one, and of course I got some scratches, that was inevitable, but fun of course!
We thought we'd hit Barker Dam next, maybe something else than rocks. Well, of course, still lots of them. But the less than 2 miles round-trip was completely worth it in my opinion.
There wasn't much water at the dam, but still awesome views.
You may have noticed but at this point, the light was already changing. So, to be safe and not miss the sunset, we drove directly to Keys View. When you get there, that is what you see first. Not too shabby, heh?
Basically a great 360 view with Palm Springs, the entire Coachella Valley in the center and left, and even Salton Sea on the far left. Not to mention the San Andreas fault. I guess it shows my ignorance but I had no idea it was passing through this area.
Of course, we were there for the sunset, and we didn't have to wait too long.
The after glow was almost better actually with beautiful orange colors on one side.
And pinkish ones on the others.
One last one before we finally left.
We finished the day in a nice restaurant, Kitchen in the Desert if you're interested. They pretended to be a little too fancy for my taste, but the food and drinks were excellent. That's what counts. In the end, without a single major hikes, just many short or medium ones, we still had a very full day. Not easy to fit in one day actually, just like it wasn't easy to summarize in one post, without too many photos (I had to show restraint...) Surprisingly I missed the bar for #poprzeczka the day before in spite of the half marathon, but not this time, all these short hikes added up! As always, thanks for stopping by and see you in my next report with most likely more hiking and beautiful views in the plan.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 33.92646 lat -116.18774 long d3scr)
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