State #2 - Part #1!

A few months back, when we were determining what to do for Chris' birthday weekend, we cottoned onto the idea of taking Arlene to Joshua Tree National Park and camping for a few days.  Fair warning: this trip - although it only lasted two full days - will probably take 4-5 blog entries because of the number of pictures I took.  JTNP is fantastically photogenic, and we came home with around 400 shots.  Yes, really.  At least we'll be set with blogs until Christmas!

The three of us - me, Chris, and Arlene!

We've always wanted to visit Joshua Tree, but we've never thought about it far enough ahead of time to get a campsite.  See, in the nicer months (October-April or so), reservations fill up crazy fast, since it's so popular; it's first come, first serve the rest of the year, but since it's 110 or so during the day in summer, there's not much attraction for us to visit at that time (we have those temperatures at home AND we have a house with AC).  We finally got off our respective duffs and made a reservation to camp two nights (a Sunday and a Monday) in spot #40 within the Jumbo Rocks Campground, the largest one in the park.

Some of the campsites behind ours within Jumbo Rocks

Chris' birthday was on a Saturday this year, so after handling some errands, including picking up Arlene from east Mesa and doing as much packing as we could that afternoon, we had a nice dinner on the porch at Southern Rail (properly socially distanced - this was our first meal out since June - and they were taking all precautions).  We finished loading up the next morning, and after saying "sayonara" to the kiddos at doggie daycare, we were on the road!

When we put her wheels over the state line,

we'd officially take Arlene out of AZ for the first time

(hence the title of these blogs)!

The drive from home to the campground inside JTNP is about 260 miles, which took us around 5 hours with several stops: 1) the Burnt Well Rest area for bathroom breaks; 2) to get some cheap AZ gas in Quartzsite; 3) the rest area just past Quartzsite, as we couldn't find a good spot to park the rig at the gas station IN Quartzsite; 4) the gas station at Chiriaco Summit; and 5) the water fill station next to the Cottonwood Entrance Station within JTNP.  

The truck gets pretty good gas mileage, even while towing, but the second gas stop was necessary due to the driving we'd do inside the park.  What I didn't initially realize was that JTNP is MASSIVE - 800,000 acres, larger than the entire state of Rhode Island!  From where we entered the park, along the 10 freeway (the aforementioned Cottonwood station), it was another 45 minutes to our campground.  Additionally, most of it was uphill; another thing that's cool about JTNP is the wide range of elevations and climates that are encompassed within its borders.  When you drive in from the 10 freeway, you're at about 1000 feet of elevation; our campground was at 4400 feet, and it's only about 35 miles of windy road from one to the other.  When you're towing that distance, particularly uphill, and in a huge area without any services (including running water, which necessitated the tank fill that was stop #5), having as much gas in the tank as possible is always a good idea.

Overall, the drive was uneventful, despite Arlene bottoming out a bit over the speed bumps in the Chiriaco Summit gas station (we have an appointment for the rig to get a bit of a lift in early December).  We finally made it to our campsite around 2:30pm, and we started setting things up.

Yet more campsites...

Initially, I was concerned about whether we'd fit in our reserved spot; I didn't read things carefully enough when I booked the site, and about a week prior, in checking things over again, I noticed a line about how the total length of your vehicles (truck AND camper) could be a maximum of 32 feet.  Since our rig is around 44' total (still quite short, given the behemoths that are being driven around out there), I had a mini panic attack that I'd royally screwed the pooch for Chris' birthday trip.  Chris, the more adaptable of the two of us, figured we'd be okay, and thankfully, he was 100% right.  We pulled in and when the ranger checked us in, he gave us the once over and went, "yeah, you'll be fine!"

All squeezed into site #40!

We really loved our campsite; you can see from the shots above that others were a bit more exposed, but ours had this cute little bowl shape that enclosed us quite well.  The spot had large rocks on all sides, and once we put Arlene and the truck along the road, we were pretty well surrounded.  We could hear our neighbors just a bit, but we couldn't see any of them, barring the occasional excursions the kids across the way would make to the top of our ridgeline.

Up on our ridge - Chris took this from the camper

"Honey, can you please stop taking pictures

and help me park the rig?"

After getting the rig all set up and breaking out adult beverages, we wandered around our spot, taking oh so many pictures.  Here's a sampling:

This was one side of our campsite, and it was massive -

isn't this cool?

Sunset painting the eastern sky all sorts of colors

A Mojave yucca - 

they look like Joshua trees, but they're slightly different.

Watching the light fade from the sky - 

you can juuuust see a few stars above the plants.

More of "our" Joshua tree, which you can also see above:

Fun fact - Joshua trees aren't really trees at all.

Instead, they're part of the yucca family.

According to legend, they earned their names when early settlers

(often members of the Church of Latter-day Saints)

likened them to the prophet Joshua, 

throwing his arms toward the heavens and rejoicing.

What's that?  You want more totally random pictures of desert plants, you say?  OKAY!

Trying out my "J. J. Abrams lens-flare" game

This one is taken standing on top of the big boulder

that "our" Joshua tree is hugging in the shots above

OMG, just one more (FOR NOW), I swear:

Although it was only mid-afternoon, due to the higher elevation and the larger - some would say jumbo - rocks around us - the sun set quickly.  It was time to experience our first night in Joshua Tree National Park!

On future blogs, we stargaze until we can't stargaze no more, we cook all sorts of exciting foods, we take a few hikes, and we snap around 8000 more pictures of spiky plants!

Chris says "cheers to that!"

(Yes, camera, this was exactly what I wanted to focus on-

thankyousomuch).

Later!

Amy