I have a hard time sitting still all day. I don’t know if its from my active childhood of constantly running from morning swim practice, to school, then to gymnastic practice, but I get restless pretty easily.

It’s rare to have a quiet weekend. I’m always planning the next hike, climbing trip, or something else adventurous. During Dark Sky Week at the end of April, Mark and I headed to Joshua Tree to take night shots with his new camera, and also to climb and hike around a new-to-us National Park. We also renewed our annual park pass. Yay!

I woke up like this.

We didn’t leave until after 6 Friday evening, and planned to drive at least to around Barstow and find some BLM land to sleep for the night. We just kept going, and got into the park around 2 AM. I realized I forgot the tent, shrugged, and we set out to hike a mile to find a spot to crash.

There’s nothing like waking up, opening your eyes, (putting on glasses), and seeing mountains. Since we hiked in at night, we had no idea what the scenery was like. We packed up, which is WAY easier without a tent, and headed back to the car. With NO plan. 😮

I had a few climbing spots picked out, but it was too cold to climb. We decided to drive to a few photo spots while waiting for it to get warmer, and then climb.

Our National Parks are set up for everyone. There are numerous roadside attractions that you can see from your car, or that only require a short walk. Then there are the sights that require a little more legwork. We decided not to try too hard that day.

We chose to start at Arch Rock, which required about a .5 mile easy hike. There were trails all over the boulder field, and we walked right by it. Realizing we’d been walking for a while we turned around and saw a group of people in one spot. Oh, there it is.

Arch Rock

The rock was pretty cool, so we snapped a few pics and headed back to the car. Neither of us felt like much physical activity yet, so we decided to keep driving and hold off on climbing.

Next down the road was Cholla Cactus Gardens. It’s a short and flat loop trail around a ton of cholla cactus. Again, pretty cool. I did a bunch of cartwheels down the boardwalk because I still think I’m a child, then we decided to keep driving.

I’d seen something about sand dunes, so we drove farther down the road to the Pinto Sand Dunes Trailhead. It starts out as a sort-of trail, then the rest is cross country. No big deal.

At the “dunes.”

We could see the mound that we thought were the dunes, so we kept walking toward it. And we walked. And walked. Supposedly, it’s only a mile out, but that was a LONG mile. Was it because we were moving slowly through sand? Or keeping our eyes peeled for the dreaded green rattlesnake?

Cholla cactus.

We never saw any interesting wildlife, not even a desert tortoise. Just a bunch of lizards, straight out of Jurassic Park.

Anyway, we climbed the “dunes,” and it was honestly pretty anti-climatic. The scenery was beautiful, but the dunes were nothing like others I’ve seen. Don’t expect Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley, or Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. Expect a small hill with scattered shrubs.

I took a weird dual screen video of how windy is was, and we started the trek back.

We drove all the way down to Cottonwood Visitor Center at the southern end of the park. Pretty, but probably won’t go down there again.

Beavertail cactus.

We finally decided climbing wasn’t happening that day, and we set off to drive back to Arch Rock to nap. I do not nap. I likely have several sleep disorders. But with only a few hours of sleep from the previous night, we were tired. So we found a quiet and flat rock off the Arch Rock trail and chilled.

This is when I laughed at ourselves. We came to hike, climb, and adventure, but instead we were driving and napping.

We eventually got our backcountry camping registration in order and hiked in again to camp. We were still somewhat near the Arch Rock vicinity, so we had really cool sunset and night shot opportunities. After a few run-ins with a hummingbird moth, I settled in for the night. Mark apparently got up in the middle of the night for Milky Way shots, but I was out like a lamp.

Sunset in JTree.

The next day, we explored the western side of the park. And we realized we would leave without climbing in JTree.

There are way more Joshua Trees on this side of the park, it was awesome! We’ll definitely camp there next time. We hit up Keys View (amazing), then Barker Dam. No bighorn sheep. Just lizards and ducks.

We left the park, walked and round the town of Joshua Tree, then headed back to Fresno.

All in all, we walked probably 5-6 miles the whole weekend, as opposed to our usual 15-20 mile days hikes. And you know what? I didn’t feel badly about it.

Mojave woodyaster.