Joshua Tree National Park (Part II)

We took a bit of a detour from Joshua Tree National Park on Monday and drove two hours to the The Mojave National Preserve. The Mojave National Preserve is one of the largest national preserves within the continental United States and covers 1.6 million acres! It is home to sand dunes, petrified lava and the largest Joshua Tree forest in the world.

As the park is so expansive, we spent our time exploring and hiking the Kelso Dunes. The Kelso Dunes are 650-feet above the desert floor and you can climb, crawl and scramble all over them. There is a phenomenon where you can hear the dunes “sing” or “rumble” if you slowly slide down the dunes while the sand cascades around you. Unfortunately, we did not hear the dunes sing, but this experience was a definite highlight for the both of us!

On our last full in Joshua Tree, we drove to the southern part of the park. We started the morning at the Cholla Cactus Gardens home to the largest area of Teddy Bear Cholla in Joshua Tree National Park. Although this trail is only 0.33 -miles long, it is full of danger! The Teddy Bear Cholla, despite its cuddly name, is a type of cactus you do not want to get near. Even slightly brushing against the cholla will cause the spines to dive into your shoes, clothes, and/or skin! Yikes! With this is mind, we made sure to heed the warnings and stuck to the trail. I read the best time to visit is during sunrise or sunset as the cactus can look like they are glowing.

We then drove even further south to the 7.3-mile Lost Palms Oasis trail. This trail starts off at the Cottonwood Spring Oasis where you can see a grove of palm trees before trekking through miles of exposed scrub desert and finally ending at the Lost Palms Oasis. Lost Palms is the largest stand of palms in the park and it is a bit surreal to see palm trees after hiking through so much barren desert!

After our hike, we drove back to the main part of the park where we stopped at the Hall of Horrors. A half-mile loop allows you to explore the rock formations and is a popular spot for scrambling and rock climbing.

Our final stop in Joshua Tree was to Keys View. This birds eye viewpoint provides panoramic views of the Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, Salton Sea and on a clear day (which we had) Mount Signal in Mexico. It was super WINDY at the top so we only stayed for a short period of time as it was difficult to enjoy with the wind blowing so fiercely, but the views were pretty amazing.

It was so much fun exploring this new-to-us area of California and certainly a different type of hiking trip than we’ve done previously. The Joshua Trees were beautiful and each of our longer hikes took us to a different location in the park, so I really feel we got to see it all during our stay!

Restaurants: Frontier Café, The Natural Sisters Cafe, Pappy and Harriet’s & Joshua Tree Coffee Company

Random Stops: World Famous Crotchet Museum & Pioneer Town