We in California are blessed to have a variety of national parks with different natural and geological formations – Joshua Tree is one such national park, very different from the most popular California national park(Yosemite) but has its own charm.
It’s a desert park with lots of rock climbing opportunities. No waterfalls or lush green meadows here but the famous Joshua Tree’s instead.
It was a very different experience compared to the hustle bustle at Yosemite.
This National park offers lots of solitude and peace along with exploration and fun.
Oct – May are the ideal months to visit this park.
Park has multiple entrances, we started our tour from the visitor center at Oasis of Mara (29 Palms Highway, Yucca Valley). Decent stay options from this entrance. Yucca Valley has lots of mural displays – multiple on 29 Palms Highway.
The Oasis of Mara center had ranger led activities ongoing at that time.
The staff at visitor center was very helpful and told us what all things to do – based on how much time we had allocated to spend and also looking at number of people in our group.
Considering it is a desert, no water is available inside. And there are no food options within the park either.
And pit toilets at most places instead of flush toilets.
There are some cool rock formations in this park – Arch rock (until you visit Arches National Park, atleast one can be happy about seeing an arch rock 🙂 ), skull rock, cap rock etc etc.
Rock climbing is a popular excursion here, you would see climbers trying various different challenges. And we also had a fun time climbing various rocky structures. Whereas desert landscape gives you cactus’s and Joshua trees.
A day was enough to explore the main vista points in the park, but one can also camp here, there were couple of tents in December. There are lots of hiking options for longer and strenuous hikes.
One would also find private vendors who do hummer trips etc from Palm Springs and take you to roads that are not frequented by regular visitors.
Overall enjoyed the park and it was a perfect getaway for winter month.
We drove from Palm Springs to Joshua Tree for a day trip in January and LOVED the warm weather! We did a few short trails within the park and enjoyed seeing a lot of bright red blooms on the trees and quite a few humming birds!
Thanks for informative article Bhavini. Kairavi and Suravi love climbing rocks and hence this seems like a park to visit. Of course has to be combined with some other trip in Southern California.