Joshua Tree National Park

After a week at the full service Navy campground, we traveled on Feb 18th  to Joshua Tree National Park (about 3 hours to the east).

Joshua Tree is one of those extremely popular national parks where it is notoriously difficult to find available campsites (especially for larger RVs).  Adding to the challenge, at the time of our visit the park service was allowing free access to the public (one of the several free admission days during the  year).  We found an area of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land just north of the park's north entrance, 

The BLM offers free camping for up to 14 days.  This dry lake bed was one of the more unique areas we have stayed at.  The lake bed was totally flat.  Although blowing dust was present we were careful to park upwind of the primary  vehicle paths across the lake.  Although there were many other campers, the area was so large that the only sound we heard was the wind.

 After a quiet night, we toured the park the next day.  Joshua tree lived up to its reputation as a  picturesque desert landscape.

We saw many climbers scaling the enormous rocks.

Skull Rock

Joshua Tree park is located on the eastern plateau of the Coachella valley.  

 At one of our stops there is an overlook where you can see most of the Cocahella valley to include Palm Springs in the center and the Salton Sea to the south.

Our stay was fairly uneventful except that there were very high winds (+30mph gusts) and cold temperatures on the last day.  We turned the RV to face the wind to minimize  the rocking and rolling.  One of our RV neighbors told us that she had seen several tents go flying in the wind. One morning we woke to a low of 19 degrees.  We remained warm and comfortable using our propane heater.