We’ve been offline for a few days as haven’t had wifi coverage and have been in national parks, so I got a bit behind with the posts again.
As mentioned in a post a few days before, we had to change our plans for getting to Yosemite. So we had our third and final night at Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio, and had decided we would go out for breakfast in Indio and get some milk and rolls that we needed before heading to Joshua Tree National Park. This is a park I’ve never been to although I, and Müfit, have driven past it many times. It’s more of a spring, autumn and winter destination because it gets so hot there in the summer. We found that temperatures had already warmed up but it wasn’t as hot as it had been in Indio, even so, they were planning to shut a number of the campgrounds at the end of the weekend because of the heat and reduction in visitor numbers.
It wasn’t a long drive to Joshua Tree, which was good, so we got into the park at a sensible time. We were going to buy single entry passes for here and Yosemite, but it worked out to only be an extra $15 to get the annual pass, so we figured we might as well do that and if we didn’t use it we could sell it on in Sun Peaks as people do this all the time!
We got some useful information from the ranger who sold us the pass. We had read on the website that reservations weren’t necessary after May, but the campground we had planned to go to was still taking reservations on the day. It was a bit stupid really, because they couldn’t reserve it for you, so you had to call a number, but there was no phone coverage so you’d have to drive back out to the edge of the park in order to do this. But he mentioned a few other campgrounds that were first come, where you could buy your camping permit and leave it on the post at the site you choose so that you’re essentially reserving it without the hassle of phoning someone.
So we decided, as we were going past a different campground that we would check that one out, and we’re glad we did. It’s called Belle, and it’s set among the big rocks much like the Jumbo Rocks campground is that we were originally planning to stay in. And we found a nice spot that we could fit Al into – as that’s the biggest challenge with these places – paid our $15 and stuck our piece of paper on the post, hoping that nobody would go and move it or anything!
After that, we continued on and decided to look at Jumbo Rocks campground anyway – we came to the conclusion that Belle was far nicer as it was smaller and we’d found a really nice spot.
We continued around the main park road, stopping at various places and having little walks. It was hot – it got up to about 34C we think, so it wasn’t unbearable but we still had to keep the AC on when driving, and make sure the dogs didn’t get too hot. Because of the dogs, we probably didn’t stop quite as much as we might have done, but we covered the main areas of the park and took lots of photos!
We returned to the campground and found our space was still there! Had some dinner, and then waited for darkness. We were looking forward to seeing the stars as it’s supposed to be really spectacular with little in the way of light pollution. But, the moon was a little bigger than a crescent and we’d been told by the ranger that it would disappear by midnight. We stayed up until midnight but there was still light from it, so unfortunately the views didn’t get as good as we had hoped. I got some good moon shots anyway though, and the kids enjoyed hanging out on a big rock for a while!
Bolgil Family Adventures 