First Long-Form Post: Majesty of Camping and Hiking Joshua Tree for 2 days

On Sunday I returned from a beautiful Memorial Day trip to Joshua Tree National Park near Yucca Valley in California, with 3 very close friends of mine. Since I started on Steemit just a couple weeks ago, I figured this would be the perfect time to make a proper post to give you out there an idea of my style of writing and blogging. I'd heard about this park frequently, but knew very little, substance-wise, going in. Was there one, grand, majestic, heralded Joshua Tree? Was it desert, through and through? What was the wildlife like? Would I be harassed by snakes or coyotes? Would I find out I've been a closeted homosexual for my entire 25-year life span? I had to set the record straight on all accounts.

We started the trip on Thursday, the 25th of May, and drove from Anaheim in west SoCal to the northwest region of Joshua tree in central-east SoCal. It was about a 2 hour drive to the Indian Cove Campground.

As tends to be the case in unexplored places, there was a fair amount of self-orienting to do at the first.

We did manage to find our campground at Indian Cove and it was a doozy. It cost us 20 dollars a night (5 bucks each). A giant slab of rock provided the backdrop for our campsite, which was outfitted with a wooden table, a fire pit with a grate, and a nice flat area to set up our 6 person tent (A large tent wound up being the way to go, because heavy gusts of wind were common in the evening, and without the combined weight of all of our things, tents may have made like tumbleweeds.....and tumbled off into the vast desert).

With that we were ready to hit the park, so we saddled up, threw some Fruit Bats on the radio, and drove in through the western entrance of Joshua Tree into the closest thing to a forest you might stumble upon in the Mojave Desert (as far as I know). The roads were lined with the Dr. Seuss-like Joshua Trees, with their wild shape and angular branches with green, spine-tipped ends.

We started with the Hidden Valley Trail. It was supposed to be a simple 1 mile loop, but the mountains were yearning for a climb. Here are some of the highlights from our first excursion.

Fruiting Yucca plant

Peak discussion time

Looking higher than I am

Comfort in the Shade

Fist raised, Resist, Black Panther Formation

Climb shot

After the Hidden Valley hike, which wound up taking us about 3-4 hours because of random bouldering, we moved on to tackle our next hikes. One was a very very short little trek (about 0.3 miles) to Barker Dam. Evidently bighorn and other animals sometimes come here to drink. However, there were no bighorn to toot about on our short journey to the dam, and, without wildlife, this lil hike was a bit of a whammy.

We proceeded to take a look at Keys View, a short drive within the park from Barker Dam with a view of Palm Springs and a pretty (but hazy) lookout, and then were off for our last hike of the day: my personal favorite-- 49 Palms Oasis, a hike that would lead us to a destination un-inferable from the name of the hike: an oasis consisting of 49 palm trees. We wondered whether the name changed whenever a new palm sprouted, but then figured that question was simply too boring to ponder about or explore any further. Maybe when 20 more palm trees sprout, a name change could be in order....ahh 69 palm trees oasis (Petulant sense of humor on display?). A park ranger earlier on had made a big stink about how we should be very weary to do this oasis hike in the afternoon due to the heat and the strenuous terrain. But this rendezvous was not as strenuous as he had forewarned. It was a mere 25 minute hike up the mountain, and once we reached the top, the oasis was another 20 minutes down.

We got to experience fantastic lizard action on the way down. Earlier on the Hidden Valley Trail, we had stumbled across what I later learned was a Chuckwalla, but we didn't manage to look at it long, because some other hikers hastily moved in on the lizard for their own snap-chatting purposes and quickly scared the creature away. This time we were uninterrupted by any a passerby.

Presenting to Steemit the Chuckwalla! See him laying on the boulder if you missed it in the same pic above

The Chuckwalla put on a little show for us....As you can see in the video, we speculated about its intentions as it bobbed awkwardly.

This orange and yellow liz also popped in front of us on the trail. I gather this kind of lizard is quite rare because I didn't see any pics of this guy online when I searched: Joshua Tree leopard print orange lizard. Take a look at the wild feet and exotic color pattern on this specimen in this extra-zoomed photo

We spotted yet another moderate-sized liz on the way down, though he's a little harder to see

Alas, we reached our destination. Shade-offering palms in the middle of the desert:

The sun's descent greeted us and bid itself adieu on the hike back and that would be it for day 1

After a night of grilling steaks, chicken, shrooms, onions, bell peppers and shrimp skewered over the campfire, under the starry sky in which the smear of the milky way was visible, we set out the next day around 10 AM for our last hike of the trip: a 7 mile loop to a old gold mine. The trail is called Lost Horse Mine Loop.

The Lost Horse Mine. The little furnaces (or whatever those things are) caught my eye as metallic minions

After reaching the mine, the traveler has the option to return or finish the loop. Finishing the loop is a few miles longer but there is a lot more to see this way than if you go back from whence you came.

** Flowering yucca plants lined the road as we got a great view of a flat section of the Mojave Desert. (My friends wait patiently below)**

Some cacti were flowering vividly

Unique seahorse-looking plants stood out to me

Some very large Joshua Trees were around the bend

I'm still not sure what these are but they look like the kind of plant someone would use to enhance the spice in their chili for the big competition (A Simpsons episode comes to mind)

A few more miles of hiking and we had finished our trip. It was time to cool off and beat the Memorial Day traffic and head home. Gabby cooled off in her own special way.

Hope you enjoyed this, and look out for my future blogging about nature and medicine. I intend to write about my time in medical school beginning in August to help give future physicians an idea of what the experience is like on a week to week basis.

Keep Steeming and follow me if you choose!

-STEEMMATE