Joshua Tree National Park

Next stop was Quartzsite, AZ. Quartzsite’s claim to fame is the annual gathering in Jan and Feb of thousands of people to the gem and mineral show. The 32 RV parks are filled to overflowing with over 2000 vendors hawking their wares. That’s it. I neglected to take a picture so don’t look for an attachment here.

Off to Joshua Tree National Park. Who would have thought deserts could be so vastly different. I always thought they were just sand dotted with cacti and an occasional Oasis. Joshua Tree NP contains portions of both the Colorado (Low) and Mojave (High) Deserts and much of the 794,000 acres of the park lies in the overlap of these two deserts which is considered the Transition Zone. We could have easily spent four days here and not explore every nook and cranny of the park; however we managed to do the high desert in the morning and the low desert in the afternoon.

The Mojave Desert is the western half of the park and the elevation is above 3,000 feet. The habitat contains Joshua trees, pinyon pines, junipers, scrub oaks, Mojave yuccas and prickly pear cacti as well as rock piles. Joshua Trees aren’t really trees but a species of yucca which is part of the lily family. The waxy, spiny leaves expose little surface area, efficiently conserving moisture. Joshua’s can grow over 40 feet tall at the rate of an inch a year. Clusters of cream-colored flowers bloom February through April. Rock piles are the result of volcanic activity. The attached picture of a rock pile reminded us of nostrils. There is also a picture of me scaling one of the rock piles with John overseeing…..NOT J One of the interesting facts I learned while at the JTNP was that a oasis indicates you are atop a crack in the Earth’s crust. When groundwater hits a fault plane, it rises to the surface and creates ideal conditions for an oasis. Fan palms are found in these oases. One of the amazing vistas in this portion of the park was the San Andreas Fault.

The Colorado Desert makes up the eastern half of the park and lies below 3,000 feet above sea level and is part of the much larger Sonoran Desert. Creosote bush is found here as well as Ocotillo, Palo Verde and patches of the Cholla (choy-ya) cactus. The cholla is also referred to the “teddy bear” cactus because it appears to be covered with soft, silvery bristles. We stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden and the Ocotillo Patch and walked around a bit and took pictures. The day was getting late and we needed to get back to our home on wheels because we were heading to LA the next day.