Joshua Tree and San Diego

I watched the sun rise in Homolovi Ruins, then began to pack to get back on the road. The drive that day would take us into California, finally.

We traveled through many miles of desert terrain, the only reprieve being a stretch in Kaibab National Forest where the brown, scrubby land became beautiful, stately pines for as far as the eye can see. As we descended from the forest, the desert gathered around us again, but its vegetation had changed. Crossing into California, we found ourselves in a hotter, flatter stretch of desert, broken by the occasional cluster of palm trees.

Joshua Tree National Park is truly a site to behold. While Big Bend (TX) is as dry a desert environ as one is likely to encounter in the U.S., Joshua Tree has astonishing bolder formations from when huge pieces of rock fragmented and were pushed out of the earth. Staring long enough, some of these formations begin to look like shapes and figures, one I saw looked like a human skull--an ominous site when surrounded by little else but rattlesnakes and spiny plants.

A park ranger once told me that the desert has secrets, if you just go and look for them. Deserts seem like they contain very little, but a 15 minute walk off the road reveals otherwise. The searcher must be patient, attentive, and known when to stop walking and remain quiet and still. But the secrets always reveals themselves in the form of a beautiful plant, or a jackrabbit, or perhaps a breathtaking view. I was delighted to find that Joshua Tree's secrets were also available given the little time I had planned to stay.

The next morning we climbed through the mountains which divide Palm Springs from the coastal areas. The ascent was grueling since the road wound back and forth in hairpin turns and the locals insist on driving at 15 mph over the speed limit on every one of them. We pulled into San Diego at three in the afternoon and the sun was just beginning to peak through the partial cloud cover.