Start Location: Hesperia, CA
Ending Location: Yuma, AZ
Miles Today: 316
Trip Miles: 1687
States Visited: 5
National Parks: 1
National Monuments: 1
Low Temp: 78.1° F
High Temp: 119.1° F
Min Elevation: -221'
Max Elevation: 3924'
Route Map:
National Parks 2012 - Day 05
Well I'm writing this a day late and I have probably forgotten most of the things we saw so it will definitely be short.
After
a ride along mostly back roads, we arrived at Joshua Tree National Park
around 11:30. We started at the visitor center which is actually
just outside of the park. The visitor center is quite a bit
smaller than the visitor centers for many of the bigger parks we have
visited. There was no theatre with videos playing, just a TV with
a short slide show. There was a cool sculpture outside the center
that we managed to get a few pictures of.
The park itself is
quite large and is actually the juncture between two deserts. The
Mojave desert mostly in the north and west and the Colorado desert in
the south and east. Because of this the plant life varies as you
drive through the park. As we drove through the park from north
to south we saw Joshua Trees, then Chollo Cactus, Ocotillo Cactus, and
finally Mojave Yucca which are often mistaken for Joshua Trees.
The desert is cool but I think I've seen enough for a while.
We stayed the night in Yuma, where we have spent time in previous winters, and then headed for Tucson in the morning.
