Sleeping in the same bed for more than five nights hasn’t happened to us in quite some time. It was nice not to be constantly moving, but after a week of relaxing with family it was time to get out of the house and do something interesting again. Although we are sort of back home, we still have plenty of free time and might as well take advantage of all of our vacation time.

This trip takes us back to the desert, two different ones actually. We visited Joshua Tree National Park for four days, and saw a bit of both the Mojave and Colorado deserts. This camping trip was especially easy to plan since we had our own car back and free gear available to borrow (thanks Phil). We grabbed some sleeping bags, gathered heaps of water, and headed out into the desert. We got lucky with the weather, this time of year it only gets up into the 80s during the day, but there was no water available in the park once you get past the entrance stations.

The rough plan was to do some hiking, camp in the established spots, but spend one night “in the bush”. Our first night was spent just pulling into the campsite, cooking and going to bed.

The real adventure began the next morning as we set out on Stubbe Spring Loop Trail. The terrain wasn’t to tough, but walking through sand with 25+ pounds on your back does wear on you. We ate lunch overlooking the green of Palm Springs in the distance. We set up camp behind a large rock pile for the night and tried not to think about what sort of animal goes with those large droppings we had been seeing on the trail all day. There are rumors of mountain lions in the area. We had great star gazing from the comfort of our bug-free tent. Being less than 150 miles from LA and even closer to some military bases, we also had a lot of air traffic whizzing through the sky as well. We (and our food) survived the night and after breakfast we returned to our car. Looking for a little more excitement, we took the Jetta down an 18 mile four-wheel-drive dirt road. It wasn’t nearly as intense as we imagined and we made it through without getting stuck or losing a tire. We made a quick run to the city of Twentynine Palms to get some firewood and checked out the oasis along the way. Once back in the park we hiked up Ryan Mountain for some great views and camped in an established campsite again that evening.

We had pretty much covered most of the northern part of the park and decided to spend our last night in the southern section. As we drove from the north, high Mojave desert, the Joshua Trees were replaced with ocotillo and cholla cactus in the lower Colorado desert. We reserved a campsite as quick as we could since it was now Friday and then headed out on the Lost Palm Oasis Trail. After thinking that the oasis was just around the corner or over the next hill about ten times, we finally found it in time for a picnic lunch. As we were looking around for a nice shady area, we stumbled across a decaying carcass of what we think was a big horn sheep. More evidence of those crafty mountain lions. In an effort not to become lunch ourselves, we walked a little ways back out of the canyon and positioned ourselves to have a good view of the area.

On the way back to camp, we were lucky enough to see a coyote passing through the scrub, looking for dinner. That evening we were amongst families escaping LA and the astronomy nerds taking advantage of the new moon. We burned all of our wood and when that was gone, we settled in for one more night under the stars.

On our trip back the next morning we took the scenic route through the hills to Temecula, where we had our traditional In-N-Out post camping trip lunch. The burgers and shakes were as delicious as we remembered and the restaurant had REAL signature crossed-palm trees in the parking lot!