Today was the long drive to Joshua Tree NP. We started out with the usual excellent breakfast (coconut french toast, ham and fresh fruit) and conversation - the two sisters were still there as well as a couple from Mississippi (originally NY and Tucson, and lived in Vail for 5 years before moving back to MS). We headed out a little later than planned, around 9:15, and had another short unexpected delay when some guy hit our car at the gas station. He seemed honest and all his paperwork was in order, so we’ll see.
The drive up 85 and then west on I-10 was relatively uneventful except for all the wacky truck drivers on the way. Not sure why they seemed relatively docile east of Tucson and so crazy here. Must be something in the California air.
We arrived at the park just before 2:00. Our first stop was to search for a BM, which we weren’t able to find. The coordinates were way off according to the description, but we checked them anyway just in case the description was in error. One hypothesis is that the parking pulloffs were added relatively recently, and that the mark was destroyed or buried during its construction. It wasn’t a problem because we needed to stretch our legs anyway, and the wildflowers here were amazing. There were at least four shades of purple, orange, yellow and pale yellow, white, just an incredible palette. Also weird and cool were the thousands of fat, juicy black caterpillars crawling around and hanging out among the wildflowers.
We continued on to the small, busy Cottonwood Springs visitors center for a much needed bathroom break and to get a map and see if they had any benchmark pins (they didn’t, but they did have a magnet like the one we have fr Saguaro NP). Good enough for me! Our only “goal” for today, if you could call it that, was to see if we could find any of the Chucky Chollas that are supposed to be located near Cottonwood Spring. The area was busy but we found a place to park along the road and checked the coordinates. We were only about 0.25 miles away, but there wasn’t a clear path or even a clear idea of where they might be located because the area was rolling hills and washes. No idea if they were even down low or up high. We descended the trail that began at the parking area, heading toward Cottonwood spring and the [???} Loop, thinking we might be able to head toward the coordinates via the wash we saw down below, but when we arrived there we saw that the area was blocked off at all obvious access points and signs gave dire warnings about heavy metal contamination. Instead of proceeding we just took a slow walk along the trail out toward (Lost Palms?). The wildflowers painted the low sandy slopes and provided a brilliant foreground for the bouldery outcrops and hills beyond. It was an alien landscape like nothing we had ever seen, and so different from Arizona.
We knew we didn’t have much time left today, and we were in need of gas (few services around) so we didn’t want to drive any further today. There was another BM on my list along the road, and this ne had adjusted coordinates so we were pretty sure it would be findable. It was, and it was in another incredibly beautiful spot! funny thing about this disk is that whoever set it may have forgotten their letter stamps, because the “H” in the designation was punched out using a series of dots rather than being stamped as usual.
Our drive back to Blythe was long but OK. We arrived in town with a few miles to spare and filled up on gas (almost as expensive as PA gas!). After all our adventures, we were starving so tried the nearby Mexican restaurant. It was busy at 5:30 but we only had to wait a few minutes before getting the nice big corner booth. The food was amazing! R had chile verde again, and it was not only delicious but came out piping hot. I had three carne asada tacos which were the biggest tacos I’ve ever seen, simply loaded up wit meat, cabbage and pico. Came with lemon wedges too, which I’ve never seen (its usually lime). We also each had a Dos Equis Amber.
Cam to the room just down the road, checked in and rested up!