Thank you, Joshua, for the trees

Good evening, Campers! It’s Silver Cliche’ with you again. This delayed post is being written Wednesday night from Jumbo Rocks Campground in Joshua Tree National Park. We’ve been out of touch with the world for over a day, but we’ll catch up tomorrow.

The desert has a hard time knowing what it wants to be. Yesterday we arrived in unseasonable heat - above 90 at the campground which is 4,000 feet above sea level. This morning it was in the mid fifties outside. Since we had no forecast to look at and since we left the windows open and a roof fan on, it was also in the fifties inside. That was enough to get me up with the sun, close the windows, shut the roof vent and turn on the furnace so my traveling companions could get cozy and sleep in a bit longer. Meanwhile, I made the coffee the old fashioned way (boiling water poured manually over grounds above a pot), took a cup of hot Java to go and headed out on foot looking for the sun.

It was a worthwhile trip. Here are a few shots:

(Yes, that’s the trailer in the two landscape shots)

Some better ones including panoramas are headed to Flickr (cellular bandwidth permitting). Check it out: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131457232@N02/ probably not until Friday.

Since we are now (reluctantly) creatures of the desert, we did what desert creatures do in the middle of the day... we stayed out of the sun and rested. As evening approached I drove 20 minutes to another part of the park. Along the way I saw a coyote claiming his dinner from the road complements of a passing BMW or Tesla. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship between the coyote and providers of roadkill. My drive culminated at Keys Lookout with an awesome view of the Coachella valley thousands of feet below.

So, tomorrow we wrap up two weeks in the desert (excepting two nights in Flagstaff). I think we are both ready to move on to forests and oceans. When I told Mrs. C’ that I wanted to drive to the lookout after dinner she declined. “I can stay here and see what you will see... rocks and Joshua trees.” she said. Mostly, she was right.

Tomorrow is 4+ hours from here at JTNP around the southern end of the Sierra Nevadas and into Kernville where we’ll  put down at the Sequoia National Forest Headquarters Campground. After that it’s on to Sequoia National Park for two nights then off to the Bug Sur area where they have repaired the latest washout and reopened the road just in time for our arrival.

I hope you’ll come along!

Later...