Joshua Tree wasn’t really on the list for this trip. We’d been before and had spent several days touring, hiking and camping in the park. We had a lot of other places on our list. It just so happened that we were going to be in the neighborhood after a day of trip chores. A trip into town to catch up on things we needed to do after a couple weeks on the road: laundry, a trip to the store and new tires had all been checked off the list. We needed a place to camp for the night. We headed to Joshua Tree National Park.
Note: This story is part of the series South to Spring. Click the link or head to our timeline for the other chapters of the trip.
We found a campsite, not always guaranteed at a busy park like Joshua Tree, but that is a story for another post. We settled in for the night and looked over the map, making plans for a couple hikes that would take us to areas of the park we hadn’t seen yet.
We were up the next morning and we headed to the Maze Loop trail, hoping to get one of the limited parking spots at the trailhead. When we arrived there were only National Park Service vehicles parked at the trailhead, with one more spot for us.
The Maze Loop is a flat and winding trail through the monzogranite boulders that give Joshua Tree its iconic look. It was a great hike, if you are at Joshua Tree I’d recommend it. We added on the Windows Loop as well, and over the 6 miles on the trail we barely saw another hiker until we approached the end of the hike. I guess we timed it about right.
We had one more night in the park, so we sat back and watched the light in the sky as the sun went down, and made plans for one more hike before we once again headed south.
We were up early again the next day. We had a decent hike planned and we still needed time to make it to our next destination on our journey South to Spring. We started our day headed up the Black Rock Canyon.
Black Rock Canyon has an entirely different setting than the main part of the park where we hiked the day before. There are some massive single leaf pinyons, lots of scrub oak, and of course the Joshua trees are still there. With all the vegetation there were also a lot of birds accompanying us on our hike. We think we also found the rock the canyon is named after. A really interesting folded gneiss was scattered up and down the canyon in interesting outcrops.
Up we went until we finally found ourselves on top of Warren Peak with 360 degree views of the surrounding landscape.
We continued on to the Panorama Loop, and as the name implies the views continued.
Before long we were headed back downhill and back to the trailhead. Our detour to Joshua Tree was complete. We’d be headed south again. We’d be running out of California fairly soon, so I was hoping our quest to find spring was right around the corner.
