We took a ranger lead wildflower walk. Now we feel like we have to tiptoe through the sandy washes. There are little flowers everywhere. We missed the Joshua Trees blooming, that happened back in February. They are by the way not trees, not cactus, but actually an Agave Yucca. Sure look like a tree! They live for hundreds of years. They claim there is one here that has a 9 foot circumference trunk and is forty foot tall. It is out in the wilderness area where we can’t get but we have seen some that are more than 20feet tall. There are great forests of them with their tuft-ended branches. Very cool to see. Probably as neat as the Saguaro.

Seems I am making up for lost time in the snake viewing category. We hiked out through a dry wash to “Willow Hole”. Indeed, there were willow trees back in a canyon among huge boulders. Nice walk except for all the sharp little stones that kick up when one hikes a wash around here. We both had to stop and empty boots a couple times. Then there was the snake. It was just a couple feet long and I still am not sure what kind it was. Kent so kindly identified it as the spotted rattler found here. I am going for a plain ole rat snake or the like. They have a great many little desert rodents around here.
The Ranger sort of sided with me. He said it was a gopher or garter or some non-venomous snake. He didn’t seem too confident to me but I liked his answer!

We are at Joshua Tree National Park. The Colorado Desert and the Mojave come together here among the mountains. Our first day here was cool since it was a little overcast. I don’t think that we hit 80 and the next few are supposed to be even cooler. There are lots of hummingbirds all around camp. We heard them pretty much all day. I never realized how much noise they make. We saw a weird lizard called the Chuckwalla (same as the mountains we are in so he is a local guy) that was about a foot long. We did some boulder scrambling on our afternoon hike to mastodon peak and met a fair sized rattlesnake. He had been sunning on the rocks and I guess we disturbed him. He was something over 5 feet long with 5 or 6 rattles. He was 30 feet away (at least when we noticed him) and didn’t seem interested in heading our way. It made me pay more attention then ever where I put my fingers when we climbed back down!

It was amazing how they are able to farm in this area. They have diverted the local rivers for open flood irrigation to fields then the runoff goes to the lake. That is, if there is enough water for any run-off. Right now the lake is very low and getting saltier every year. Without irrigation the land is desolate and barren. Right next to that there are stands of date palms and field after field of row crops and acres of Bermuda grass and alfalfa to supply huge cattle feeder lots. It just doesn’t seem possible that they could get anything to grow.
The southern end of the lake is rimmed with geothermal power generating plants some of which have been in operation for over 30years. We didn’t get to tour but saw a pretty good video of the way they work. Their position is that it is infinitely renewable if done right. Well, for as long as the subterranean magma stays hot; so forever from a practical standpoint. It kinda smells too though. They release steam with a very “earthy” smell to it.
We meant to check out Slab City and Salvation Mountain but somehow missed them as we were driving around the lake. Slab City is a sort of RVers squatter’s city. It is the apparently the nightmare version of boondocking areas where people have just settled on abandoned land. Some live there year round. It is in a very poor rural area and folks at the Parks claim the fulltimers there just don’t have the funds to live anywhere else, or they are hiding out from the government! Anyway, we just wanted to take a peek at underground culture but missed it and didn’t think it was worth driving back to look for it.
Salvation Mountain is an adobe mountain built by a religious fanatic or at least zealot. Supposed to be great to see. It is all painted with religious icons and images. We missed it to though. It is supposed to be kind of around Slab City. We might look for it again one day but for now, we have moved on.

We spend a couple days at Salton Sea. It is this giant salt lake in the middle of the desert. Very much the middle of nowhere. They claim great birding, we are just behind the major migrations though so didn’t see anything too impressive.
The main problem, at least for me, is that it stinks. There is a lot of standing brackish water and it just smells bad. Add the fact that this is a major bird migration flyway and they just had 10,000s of Snow geese, pelicans and many smaller fowl spend a few weeks here! Phewee! Fortunately for us it was breezy most of the time we were there but it was still tough to ignore. We had our first 90 degree day while we were there so the windows were open all night too. Better than the Great Salt Lake when we were last there, at least the beaches here were not covered with bugs! Still, we probably won’t be heading back any time soon.

On our way out of town we checked out several other dry camping/boondocking areas. They were all on State park property and were just open areas with no improvements (that means no water, restrooms or trash pickup). Two are open desert and one is up in the mountains. All looked to be workable places if we are looking for a place just to crash for a while to stay out of the cold North. We enjoyed the area, at least this time of year when the wild flowers are blooming and the temps are just bumping into the 80s. The little town seems friendly enough and has stores and restaurants to support longer term stays. They claim up to 10000 winter there during high season. We might find that a little too busy but may give it a try.

We stared the day with a hike of the Palm Canyon Trail the signature trail. It runs about a mile and a half from the trailhead. Pretty little oasis near the head of an canyon where some water is constrained by the rock formations and a palm grove has developed. Then we moved out of the campground to try our hand a boondocking. After setting up camp we joined the evening “hawk watch”. This area is a roosting site for migrating Swainson’s hawks. They are counted as they come in to roost for the evening. On a banner day they will have more than a thousand spend the night. The count for our night 65. Impressive to see and it must be simply amazing on the days when they get really good counts.
Today we were up before daylight to hike 3 miles up a canyon to a waterfall before the heat set in. We arrived at the falls around 9:00, spent an hour or so enjoying the solitude then started back down. By the time we arrived back at the trailhead it was getting pretty busy and approaching noon. I am sure there were lots of really hot and tired hikers by the time they returned starting in the hot part of the day. We drove around to visit the balance of the Galleta Meadow sculptures. A local has been investing in land as it comes available and commissioned sculptures resembling mostly the original inhabitants of the region to be placed along the road for the public to see. We saw all manner of dinosaur, sloth, mammoth, camels, turtles, lamas, and big horn sheep. They also included historical men of the area including the farm workers, a friar, native americans and a cowboy panning for gold. Pretty interesting and a little shocking when you are not expecting a life-size metal mammoth to be standing in a field. Afterward we went searching for bighorn sheep the namesake of the park. Success at last! We checked the sightings in the visitor center and the last couple reported were along the road over one of the mountain passes. So, off we went and we found not one but, more than 20 including several young grazing along the side of one of the mountains. Very Impressive to see.

The view as we topped the mountain and looked down into the valley was spectacular. Much of the floor of the valley is the Salton Sea and seeing that large body of water out here sort of threw me for a minute. With the recent rain, there are quite a few wildflowers. The locals say it isn’t a great year for them I think that the splashes of color in what we are used to see as drab browns and grey look wonderful. Kent has pried his hands off the steering wheel and we have relaxed and had diner. We heard the coyotes yipping again tonight as well as the silly sounding calls of a covey of quail as they do their keystone cops sort of booping about between brush and cacti. We will spend some time hiking and enjoying the high 70s and maybe even 80 under clear blue skies.