Joshua Tree National Park

NOTE: I decided to go with big thumbnails of 30-40K, this will take a while to load as there are about 65 pictures. Not a big deal for DSL but dial up modems could take 10 or more minutes. You might want to take a break! Also a larger pictures is available by clicking on the thumbnail if you wish. The originals are all larger as most are cropped or re-sampled to 75%. I think my camera is getting tired. It was originally my brothers and the picture count is now over 4600! Maybe he is ready to upgrade again and has  another spare. I highly recommend you visit his travel site at www.thomasoneil.com for his entertaining accounts and the pictures of his trips. 

Several months ago I bought a book on Joshua Tree N. P. on what to see and do. After absorbing that for awhile I finally decided to go over the Thanksgiving break to catch an extra day. My broadcast invite roped in my bonfire friends Joe and his main squeeze Marina and their friend Mariza, Mariza's friend Kirk unfortunately picked up a cold at the last minute and he decided to pass. We met at my house Friday morning and by 9:00 we were heading north to the park, about a 3 hour drive from San Diego.

JTNP has 7 or so "first come, first served" campgrounds and you are not allowed to primitive camp like Anza Borrego State Park allows so we were taking our chances on where we would be setting up camp. Signs of "Campgrounds Full" greeted us as we paid our fee to drive in. We meandered through each campground looking for a spot with no luck. We stopped at a backcountry trail head parking lot for lunch to consider our options with only one campground left to check . We decided we would drive south down to Anza Borrego which would be about a hour or so away. With zero expectations we pulled in to the White Tank campground (only 18 spots) and two campsites were just clearing out. A ranger we had talked to earlier mentioned that the campgrounds had been full since Tuesday. Apparently people like to get a jump on the long weekend but now Friday afternoon some are packing up and heading home. An honorable mention should go to my fellow Sportsmobile'R Jean who was going to try and join us but with the lack of phone service and iffy accommodations thought it best to back out.

We quickly set up camp, did the short nature hike and came back to cook some steaks and potatoes. Dinner was very good and we settled in around the campfire with some wine, blond jokes and embarrassing moment stories. I think I passed on the last one. However I'm now permanently scared thinking of Joe as a 14 year old who forgot to put on his basketball shorts and was out shooting hoops on the court in his tidy whities! We made a pact to stay up to at least 8:00 and I think we made it to at 9:00 before letting the fire burn down and turning in.

Our BIG deal is always cooking up a cholesterol-free breakfast feast. Eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage all wrapped in giant tortillas with melted cheese and salsa. The desert air just sucks the cholesterol and most of the calories just right out of the food as it cooks is my theory. Even so, there are no anorexic twins in our camping group! Note to self - check to see if Joe has remembered the tortillas next time! I got to use my new (for me) 50 year old 6" cast iron skillet that my V.G. friend Janice gave me. It is so cute! Her mother had it for many years and Janice never used it so passed it along to the Rat Patrol. I had wire brushed and re-seasoned it and it is perfect for my two egg over hard! Joe has a picture of it cooking away. I hope to include it when he gets his pictures uploaded (hint hint). Basically our morning was making tea, talking about breakfast, making more tea, cooking breakfast, making more tea, eating breakfast, making more tea, cleaning up from breakfast.

Exhausted from the breakfast effort we slowly put together our day plan. Joe, Marina and Mariza were returning to San Diego in the afternoon so I pushed my big plan to take the Geology Road tour. This 18 mile dirt road self guided tour winds it way through Pleasant Valley and by the Hexie Mountains. I had both rear captains chairs installed in the van and was ready to be an obnoxious tour guide. This is also when I finally found my camera. We failed, however, to get a Geology Road program at the turn off that explained the 16 markers so basically we had to make stuff up when ever we saw one of the markers. I personally only saw about 5 markers so everything I said was probably fictitious anyway.

There is one more memorable story. Saturday afternoon when I returned to the campsite it was cold and breezy. I had a T-bone & potatoes to cook and I wanted to take care of cooking, eating and clean up before it got dark. Saturday overall was much colder than Friday, a cold Santa Anna had started and as I finished eating around dusk the wind was blowing and the temp was already below 50. The night before I was in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt till 9:00. Now I was in jeans, a ear flap hat, flannel shirt, the hooded sweatshirt and shortly after starting the fire I went and put on my mountain jacket with a hood and my gloves. The wind picked up and burned the wood down quickly. The flames were mostly horizontal and no radiant heat was able to get back to my chair. Once when I got up to go rename Neighbor Rock the wind blew my double chair into the fire. Thank goodness I had my fire extinguisher handy (kidding). By 7:00 the wood (and the wine) were gone, it was 43 degrees and I could not think of a single reason to stay up. My next door neighbors had already packed up their tent and left by this time. I decided to leave the van penthouse down because of the wind and I slept downstairs with my gloves and stocking hat on. The low temp in the van that night was 36 degrees. The wind was so strong it was rocking the van during the night.