I'm not saying it's a rough place but when our motel looked like this we had to find somewhere else to stay;
The alternatives weren't to good either;
We used so much fuel we had to fill up at the local gas station;
Fortunately the corner store had everything;
In the end we found a very nice Holiday Inn to stay in and had a fabulous time in Twenty Nine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park.
A small selection of the photos we took in Joshua Tree National Park;
A forest of Joshua Trees;
An old ranchers dam;
Ancient petroglyphs in the park;
Skull rock;
Jakki climbing to the Arch;
View of the rocks;
Wow - we thought Sedona was amazing, then we got to Joshua Tree. To use an American expression, this place is awesome. It really is an amazing place, the park is huge and crosses part of the Mojave desert.
The park is dotted with the remains of old gold mines. So our first day we hiked to 'Lost Horse Mine' in the middle of the park.
The road to the trail head;
Views of the mine from the trail;
There's still some mine debris on the trail;
Close-up of the mine works;
;
We climbed to the top of the mountain behind the mine. The view from the top;
Not sure about the quality of our overnight accommodation;
at least they provided a bucket...
Lastly some a couple of pictures of the Joshua Trees. We were lucky to see the trees flowering, we're told this doesn't happen every year and when it does the flowers only last a couple of weeks.
Very lucky. This is one place you really must visit.
After spending a few days with our friend Darrell in Phoenix (thanks for putting us up and letting us do some laundry) we hit the road and headed to Twenty Nine Palms in California on the outskirts of the Joshua Tree National Park.
A couple of photos from the road;
Any guesses how far the next corner is?
There's gold in them hills...
Day 3 saw tired legs (at least for P) so a shorter, 5 mile hike, round Chimney Rock & across the front of Thunder Mountain.
P looking tired, Chimney Rock in the background;
Views from the hike;
Thunder Mountain;
Jakki at the top having scrambled up a peak;
So what we'd like to know is, why are there the different layers in the rock? And what causes them to be different colours and why are the white layers harder than the red layers?
