Fun With Chris and Jane

We left Yucca Valley shortly past noon, and Google Maps called out nearly 3 hours travel time from there to the Poppy Reserve located west of Lancaster – we figured this was an inaccurate estimate based on some system glitch but blindly chose to follow the directions provided, routing us first northwest around Victorville before leading us across the Mojave on various back roads. As we passed by Saddleback Butte State Park (which was graced with beautiful fields of gold and…

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Up early this Sunday morning, we decided to visit the park’s extreme western end and take in some final sights before heading for home.  We originally had on our radar a steep-ish hike to Warren Peak, a prominent summit that dominates this area, but, wanting now to save some miles for an alternate stop at the Poppy Reserve on our way back, we chose instead to do a shorter, scenic loop on the High View Nature Trail – we didn’t know…

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Since we wanted to get back and have time to explore Joshua Tree town, we decided to do one more short hike today before leaving the park.  The Hidden Valley day use area is one of the places we had visited with the Arredondos in 2014 – we knew there was a nature trail in that vicinity, so we pulled into the very crowded parking lot to check it out, luckily finding an open spot near the picnic sites.  Of…

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From the eastern limit of our Joshua Tree excursions at Cholla Garden, we headed back west to the main park road and followed that a short distance further west to the Split Rock picnic area, located about half a mile north of the pavement at the end of a good dirt road.  A 2-mile loop trail begins here, the northern arm of which leads into a shallow drainage before turning about to the southwest, passing through several rock gardens and…

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Day 2 of our Joshua Tree adventure began with a visit to Cholla Garden – we drove east through Twenty-Nine Palms before turning south into the park and then southeast into the upper reaches of Pinto Valley. Here, the terrain falls away to the east as the desert transitions from the higher Mojave to the lower Colorado environment, and the grand east view into the valley was wonderful in the bright morning sun. Cholla Garden offers a very short but…

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After returning from Ryan Mountain, we looked around for another short hike to finish off the day before driving back to Joshua Tree town – Skull Rock was nearby to the east, so we headed there to check out the formation and its adjacent 1.7-mile nature trail loop.  We found the trailhead easily enough since it’s right on the main road, and we embarked right away, taking only water bottles and leaving our packs in the Jeep.  There were a…

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Chris’ cousin Cynthia turned 60 earlier this year, and we generously gifted her with 60 miles of hiking fun with Chris and Jane in 2017 (some gift, right?). At any rate, we had all wanted to get down to Joshua Tree for a few days and see the wildflowers, which we expected to be in full bloom by the first weekend in April. Of the many options available, we chose to start with a 3-mile round trip hike of Ryan Mountain,…

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After lunch at the Furnace Creek Golf Course, we wandered around the area a bit before heading back out to Ridgecrest – we had decided that we didn’t have enough daylight left for any more significant hiking, and we wanted to not drive the rough Panamint Valley road in the dark again, especially with rain in the forecast for the evening. So, we drove north on Hwy 190 along familiar ground, stopping a handful of times for more wildflower photos….

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After returning to Ridgecrest on Friday night, we decided to head somewhere in the eastern Sierras since we were two hours closer to those destinations than if we’d started from home, yet, after waking up early, we decided to make the return trip to Death Valley instead – there were simply too many things that we still wanted to see. Since we were getting ready well before sunrise, Jane suggested we drive the long way around, out to Barstow, then…

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After our not-so-inexpensive lunch in Furnace Creek, we had to choose whether or not to continue northward to hike Mosaic Canyon near Stovepipe Wells as originally planned, or to visit Dante’s View, which meant another 17-mile drive southeast of Furnace Creek and additional distance we’d have to make up for the drive back west to Ridgecrest – at this point, we were unsure if we’d be returning to Death Valley the next day, so we decided to do Dante’s View,…

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