Day 59: Heading east from the coast, we pretty quickly got into the summer heat. Rather than sticking to the interstate highways, we took a more scenic route from Coronado to Joshua Tree National Park, which took us on some winding roads over a couple of passes and through the Salton Sea valley, where the temperature was 111°F. We did find a picnic shelter for lunch, where it was a “cool” 104 in the shade. At least the temperature moderated after sunset. By blind luck we arrived at Joshua Tree NP on the peak date for viewing the Perseid meteor showers and saw a good display.
Day 60: About half of Joshua Tree NP is in the Colorado section of the Sonora Desert and the rest is in the more northern and higher elevation Mojave Desert. We camped and hiked in the Mojave section, which is where the Joshua Trees are found (and the heat is less intense!). Besides the distinctive Joshua trees (a species of yucca) and a wide variety of desert plants, the Mojave section of the park is characterized by many islands of rounded granite formations protruding from the flat gneiss landscape.
A big highlight for us was a sighting a bighorn ram up close on the Ryan Mountain hiking trail. We also hiked around one of the park’s very attractive and informative interpretive trails. The Native Americans pounded the leaves the Mojave yucca to separate the fibers to use for weaving cloth and rope.
Day 61: On our way out of Joshua Tree NP at the start of another travel day, we stopped at some more roadside display panels and a couple more interpretive trails. At one area there was such a thick migration of yellow caterpillars crossing the park road to feed on the tiny yellow chinchweed flowers that it was impossible to avoid running over several of the critters.
Once down at lower elevation, we were back in temperatures around 110 for the drive into Arizona, where we began to see saguaro cactus and prickly pear cactus in addition to the ocotillo plants we had first noticed in southeastern California. Then our route climbed steeply out of the broad desert valley onto pine-covered mountains a mile high, where it was cooler. We just had enough time before dusk for a bike ride on the Peavine rail trail through the beautiful granite dells in Prescott.
It’s all so beautiful!