Joshua Tree National Park (California USA)

Our Campsite

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Fransisco

If Noah's post made any sense great, if not I'll recap. We got to Joshua Tree National Park from Flagstaff during a very hot week. The town near the park had forcasted highs of 109 for the entire week. Camping in the heat is not fun, climbing in the heat is not fun. We left Joshua Tree after two days and went to beautiful Santa Barbara, spent 4 days there and headed up to SF where we have been two days now.(And it is frigid here compared to Joshua Tree)

Joshua Tree was beautiful and we will return another time (in the winter). I'll let the photos speak for themselves...

Joshua tree and the golden coast

just a short update here, as we were heading out of flagstaff we saw on the news that needles, a town near joshua tree had forecasted highs of 110, 43.3 in celsius, we thought that joshua tree would be a cool oasis in the middle of the desert.

when we got into joshua tree it was around 1 pm but we had to set up the tent and go meet my cousin barry for lunch and by the time we got back to our campsite it was much cooler and around high 80s, we sampled the granite climbing in the area and found it to be a lot of slab climbing and also greasy.

the next day however we decided to cut our trip to j-tree short when around noon the temperature in our tent was around 120.

that night however we went for a final hike and managed to not only see a herd of bighorn sheep hanging out on the rocks but also saw four males battling and butting heads over a female.

the next day we drove out around 9 am and we are now in santa barbara, which is very beautiful and a little bit colder then joshua tree.

photos of j-tree and santa barbara to come at some point. 

photos of bandaleir santa fe flagstaff grand canyon sedona sunset crater petrified forest painted desert

This is Bandaleir National Monument Some Native american ruins and Pueblos



Us in Santa Fe, NM

Noah at the oldest house in Santa Fe



The divide btw Arizona/NM if you don't know the continental divide determines water flow in the continent. West of the divide water flows to the pacific ocean, east of it flows to the atlantic
The painted Desert and Petrified Forest

Noah and I at the Tipees of the Painted Desert

Some petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park

The drive to Sedona, Az

Hiking around sedona (the sphinx formation is in the background)

At the top of the Sugarloaf Hill trail

Noah with chimney rock in background

Us at Sunset Crater National Monument!

This is sunset crater a new-ish volcano that erupted about 500 years ago. Because of the way that it erupted. many cinder cones were formed in the area that are basically mounds of volcanic basalt.

lava flow visible at the bottom of the photo

Climbing at "the Pit" with Graham in Flagstaff Az

The Grand Canyon

We hiked the South Kaibab Trail

the black widow spider in her nestThe view from ooh-aah point

Noah with a century Yucca. It blooms once every 10-15 years but early people named it this because it felt like forever to them (a century)
At Cedar Ridge


View on the way back up
The snow/hail on the side of the road