Joshua Tree National Park Day 2

Wednesday, April 22

Day 15

Woke up early but lounged in the tent until nearly 7 due to a poor night's sleep on partially deflated sleeping mats. I have to say, however, with the rain cover off the tent, the views of stars in the night were spectacular! It makes such a difference to get out of the city. Made our traditional coffee and oatmeal and enjoyed our coffee and a beautiful morning among the giant rocks of Hidden Valley campground.

 We talked to a young man camping next to us who told us there is supposed to be a meteor shower tonight around midnight. We might have to check it out. After coffee, we headed out for a day of hiking. We started at Barker Dam trail head, a relatively simple trail to an old dam, built by the early ranchers and settlers in the region.

 There used to be more rainfall here which produced good grazing land for cattle. The dam was built in 2 phases as shown by the different materials used. 

Barker Dam

 There are cactus flowers and lots of interesting flora and fauna. We saw small jackrabbits and geckos. After the trail, we ate our oatmeal in our traditional back of the trunk style and then headed out to the Wall Street Mill Trail head where there is an old goldmine, an old car, and the ruins of a ranch house.

Wall Street Mill

 It was all quite interesting among the beautiful desert setting

Unfortunately, my camera battery ran out before I could get pictures of the old car. We ended up walking back to the car, getting the battery and returning to get some more photographs and had quite a good time along the way. We made our way back to camp and made lunch and then headed out to Hidden Valley trail head. This was a gorgeous trail. At one time, some cattle and horse rustlers hid the horse and cattle in this valley which was surrounded by rock. They had dynamited an opening to the valley to get in and grazed their stolen goods there. Eventually they sold them to people in other states than the areas they had stolen from. Today the area does not get enough rainfall to support grazing of animals.

Hidden Valley

We drove back to the West entrance to get some more water as somehow both of our big water containers had leaks. Jack managed to get cell service long enough to call Vivid Seats. He is already trying to plan football season. I cannot keep up with this man! Back to the campground with the water and then on to one more hike around Jumbo Rocks campground where we were originally going to camp. We did a 1 mile loop to Skull Rock which took us through part of the very large campground. Although Jumbo Rocks was nice, we are both very happy we had the opportunity to camp at the smaller, climber friendly Hidden Valley. After the hike we returned to camp and dinner,

Skull Rock

 It was quite windy tonight, so here we are in the car, me typing away and Jack trying to figure out our route between Phoenix and Arlington. It is a LONG way. Hoping for meteor shower tonight so will not put on the rain flap even though it is chilly. The temperature variation here is typically 40 degrees between night and day time.