Johnny D: Thank you for the Winter Road Trip Advice

Kai's High School has a 3-week Winter Break, so we decided to enjoy the Holidays with family before setting off for our adventure.

I tried my best to wrap things up at work for 2017, then spent much of Thursday night, 12/28, packing the car.

Day One (12/29): We woke up at 5:00 AM, ready to roll:

It's exhilarating, leaving home at dark and watching the Sun slowly rise:

We headed down I-5 South, which is generally a boring, straight freeway down the Central Valley:

Fortunately, time flew relatively quickly, and we were soon ascending into the Mojave Desert:

Thanks for checking in, Bluelight.

Some 7 hours in, we started getting closer to our destination for the night: Joshua Tree National Park.

The last time that I was at Joshua Tree, it was a National Monument.  When we arrived in the area, I couldn't believe how developed the area was, with more chain stores/restaurants and many more people and cars.  We stopped by the North Entrance Visitor Center, where a staff person told me that Joshua Tree became a National Park in 1994(!).  My future wife and I met in the Los Angeles Basin and we often camped in the undeveloped sites, thoroughly enjoying our escape from the hustle and bustle (and cars and smog) of So. Cal.  Kai and I arrived at the Visitor Center around 3PM and the Sun was already low in the sky (that's Winter for you).  We spent a little time searching for a roadrunner without success and decided to take a late hike to 49 Palms Oasis, nearby.

The Sun was low in the sky as we arrived at the trailhead, so we packed our flashlights and headed out for what would be a relatively short hike with a bit of elevation gain.  The great thing about the timing of our hike was that just about everybody was returning to their cars as we were heading out.

We started our climb over the ridge and I couldn't help but stop from time-to-time to enjoy the change in lighting as the Sun descended to the horizon.

Hey Judit and Daylight!  Good to see you.

Well, my daughter is telling me that it's "Screens Off Time" at the old homestead, so I'll have to finish Day/Night #1 a little later.

Good Night.

Thanks for checking in.

And Happy Birthday, Turtle. 

I'm in shock about Henry's passing.  He was especially great at providing such positive feedback about our road trip stories.  Love you, Henry and BeNice.

Hey Jay, Ken, Hall and Smiley!

Hall: I feel much the same way about my local childhood wilderness playground, Pinnacles (formerly) National Monument.  Now more developed, more restrictive, and more people.

Ken, I have to admit that I knew nothing about Mr. Parsons' pact to be cremated at Joshua.  Very interesting story.  I doubt that Kai would've put up with such a goose chase of searching for that site, though.

As this hike was one of the big highlights of our trip, I'm going to share a few more photos.

As we crested the moderate ridge, there were only a few hikers still on the trail, heading back to their cars.

^This photo reminds me that Kai was on a personal mission to scatter any cairns that we came across.  This, of course, allowed me to stop more often and take more photos.

After the relatively long drive, it felt so good to stretch our legs and move our muscles.  It was also great to breathe in the fresh air and enjoy sitting still and catching the views.

I'm a nut for changing shades and colors as the sun moves.

There was a surreal blue, which didn't come out so well on the auto-adjusting smart phone.

We descended into a quiet, cozy basin...the only people on the trail at this point.

I stopped suddenly.  This scene created a strong sense of nostalgia and comfort.  Hard to explain, but it was a great feeling.  And I was so glad to finally bring my son to this park (we had been talking about visiting Joshua Tree for years).

We soon caught sight of the Trail's namesake.

Well, Kai and I are not "normal" hikers, which comes in handy if you like peace and solitude.  We had the oasis to ourselves.  It was becoming dark, but it was still warm, so we took our time exploring the palm grove and sitting on polished boulders to take it all in.

When we'd had our fill, I pulled out the flashlights and we returned to the trail.  Turns out that the flashlights were never used, as the Moon was plenty bright, if not full.  Another great feeling: being able to walk at night without the constricting beam of a flashlight to limit the senses.  Quite frankly, I was grateful that Kai took the lead on our way back to the car: the Moon was often directly behind us at such an angle that the downward steps in the trail were completely invisible until we were already stepping off of them.  Lots of unexpected and jarring drop-offs from the junior member of the team.  Of course, he took it all in stride, horrible pun intended. 

We made it back to the car safely (and the entrance gate was still open), then drove the the Yucca Valley Super 8, which provided a good night's rest (all campgrounds were full).

All-in-all, it was a great start to our trip.

Great to see you, Schwa, Alias, MarkD, and St. Mark.

I've been pretty busy, which is generally good, but it's keeping me from continuing with this thread.

For Day Two (12/30), we woke up at 5:30 AM, ate a quick hotel continental breakfast and headed into the park.  Our plan was to drive Southeast through the park, check out the General George S. Patton Memorial Museum near Indio, then head East as far as we could comfortably go.

The sun was low in the sky as we drove through the gate.  It didn't take long before we decided to pull over to check out a couple of iconic Joshua Trees.

Those who have been to Joshua Tree NP know that it is full of rock islands and other formations, so, of course, we had to climb at least one of them.

Some nice dawn views as we ascended.

Kai is a natural rock scrambler and his old man did his best to keep up.

It was a nice way to start the day.

We jumped back into the car, with the hope that we would arrive at the museum right before it opened at 9:30.

We enjoyed listening to music and stopping whenever we saw anything interesting.  We were especially pleased to catch a great view of a Prairie Falcon, perched on a small cottonwood tree.

This is a view of the hills where the Silver Bell Mine was.  It produced gold in the 1930's lead in the 1940's and copper in the 1950's:

This is the only photo of our chariot, our new Toyota Prius (our White Prius died late last year):

Sure enough, we arrived at the General George S. Patton Memorial Museum at 9:29 AM.  It was very conveniently located just outside the south entrance of Joshua Tree NP.

As Across pointed out, it's a combination of old tanks outside and lots of military memorabilia inside.  This was the area that Patton and his armored troops practiced to prepare for upcoming tank warfare in North Africa during WWII.

This was one of our favorites, a late WWII Pershing Tank:

The ubiquitous Sherman:

Upon closer inspection, we realized most of these tanks had evidence that they were actually range targets at one time.

We got a kick out of seeing this fake tank frame over a jeep - a cheap way to simulate a larger formation of tanks.

Kai enjoyed exploring the inside of this tank turret display:

Artifacts that have been recovered in the area: