Celebrating National Park Week: Joshua Tree National Park

I was very fortunate to visit Joshua Tree National Park in southern California in March, 2019, on my way back from a month spent wandering around the Baja, Mexico.  Joshua Tree started as a national monument in 1936 before becoming a national park in 1994.  Currently, the park includes 320,763 hectares (792,623 acres) of desert habitat, at the confluence of part of the Colorado Desert with the southern end of the Mojave Desert.  While the landscape is definitely desert, Joshua Tree supports an amazing amount of biodiversity, including almost 750 species of vascular plants, annuals, trees and shrubs, and cacti.  Besides the awesomeness of just being a desert, the area offers great recreational opportunities, especially hiking and climbing.  The area is a mecca for rock climbers, with over 8000 climbing routes and 2000 boulder problems; Joshua is a world-class climbing destination.  I camped three nights at the Ryan Campground, one of the first-come first-served campgrounds; my site, #10, was great, even if a tad busy with a short sport route bolted up a nice rock wall at the back of the site.  It was spring in the desert when I visited, cool almost cold at night, but always sunny and warm during the day, definitely shorts weather.  A superbloom of spring annuals was underway in parts of the park, and the joshua tree itself was flowering.  Joshua Tree has suffered some abuse of late, especially during the government shutdown which ended in late January just before my visit.  There are so many special places to visit in the US, including many national parks.  Joshua Tree is one of those special places, the vegetation, the animals, the rocks, and the climbers having fun on those rocks, beautiful place worthy of a visit.  Put this park on your list.

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