We all had the Grand Slam mostly because it was only $4 and you can't go wrong with that. My waiter asked me how I wanted my eggs and I said runny. He looked at me kinda weird and said okay. Our food came pretty quickly and I wasn't even done with my place-mat word search yet. We enjoyed every bite.
We drove down Adobe Road and got gas at the same gas station. It was my turn to buy gas and it was $60.00! It was a raping! It's ridiculous that gas costs so much.
And now on to Joshua Tree National Park...a park I've had on my list of places to visit and now I get to cross it off. We stopped at the visitor's center first, at the north entrance, just to learn more about the park and to see if they had any cool souvenirs to bring home. I found my usual postcards, magnets and stickers and I bought mom a reusable bag with a Joshua Tree on it. There was also a guy there with a WSU Coug shirt on and a guy with a Sounders shirt on. The Pacific Northwest was sure represented at the visitor's center today.
We drove into the park and stopped at the gate. Jim had a Golden Eagle Pass and it got our entire car load inside the park for free. We were so excited to see Joshua Trees for some reason. We really didn't see any until we got more than a mile into the park. We found the perfect one, pulled aside and took a few pictures. They were so weird. Almost alien-like.
We stopped at the various places inside the 558,000 acre park. What makes Joshua Tree NP unique is that it lies in a transition zone between the lower in elevation Colorado and the higher in elevation Mojave deserts. They blend together to feature a landscape of vibrant plants and animals.
We got out of the van several times to read the information panels and to take several hundred pictures. I even took a few videos. We even had some time to do a couple of Earthcaches...which I found out later we did but didn't mean to do. There was a mix up with the GPS. They didn't get downloaded or something.
We stopped at Skull Rock, a really cool rock of granite formed from thousands of years of erosion.
We had to wait in line to take our pictures in front of the skull. There were lots of people parked on the side of the road wanted to see this geological anomaly. We made a few more stops to see the rocks and Joshua Trees.
We spent time in the Ryan Mountain area. We saw a lot of climbers scaling the rocks in the distance. We walked the nature trail next to some artists painting the landscape.
We stopped in a place called Hidden Valley to eat lunch.
While we had lunch, it actually sprinkled on us. There was actually moisture in the clouds? It was 90 degrees outside! There were lots of people having picnics, school gatherings and of course people climbing the rocks nearby. We thought it was weird there wasn't any garbage cans near the picnic tables. We actually had to go searching for one. We used the restroom before continuing on through the park.
After Hidden Valley, there really wasn't anything else along the way, more rocks, Joshua Trees, Yuccas and desert cacti. We made it to the West Entrance to the park which took us out to the town of Joshua Tree. We picked up a few caches along the way including Wagon Stop (GC1229J) and Native Desert (GC1229Q), there we actually saw a coyote running through the area.
When we got to Joshua Tree, they went inside the other visitor's center while I ran across the street to see what was inside Coyote Corner, a unique gift store. I really didn't find anything all that great...mostly hippy stuff. They drove the van over to me and we found a cache nearby, A Stop in Joshua Tree (GC4R3GR). It was hidden in a dumb spot and we were all disappointed with that find. We stopped for one more before going to Pioneer Town, it was a virtual called Tortoise Island (GCG1Q0) and it was awesome.
We drove west towards Yucca Valley and found the road that led us to Pioneer Town, a place Brenda was really excited about. I had brought a newspaper article, that Megan found, about the Mojave desert and all of the interesting places to go while visiting. We technically could do four of the five things with the allotted time and distance from each. They were Joshua Tree, Pioneer Town, Sign Graveyard, the giant dinosaurs on I-10 and I can't remember the other one but it was closer to Palm Springs.
We arrived at Pioneer Town and got out. It was hot! We walked around the place and into the area where actual western movies were filmed. The set provided a stage for the actors as well as actual homes while they filmed. One of the buildings had a chicken house attached to it and with a quarter, I found in a cache earlier that day, provided them with some food out of the gumball machine. We walked the entire length of the set and decided to head back towards 29 Palms for some more caching. We stopped by the bar to take a quick picture.
When we got back to town, we found two one dumb one and one that took some time to retrieve. That one was called Old Glory Road (GC10ATP) and it was near a closed restaurant and there were some maintenance guys working on the outside of the building. They really didn't pay too much attention to us. It was true about needing a tool to retrieve it. Good thing Jim had a bag of tools. We tried a few things before busing the small pliers out. I had to grab it just right or it would fall back down into the hole. After a few tries I finally got the sucker out of its hidey hole.
We encountered construction through the middle of Yucca Valley and needed to make a note of this when we leave to drive back to the airport tomorrow.
We drove back towards 29 Palms and grabbed a few right off the road. We needed almost 25 to get our quota for the day and an even 2200 for the trip. We got seven easy ones right off the road. One was at a sculpture and it was a magnetic key holder, it was called Spokes 2 (GCZ93E) and it reminded me more of a sun than spokes.
We found a few more, one at the large 29 sign in the middle of town called THE BIG Two Nine (GC1RP04), one at the old sign graveyard called, MOTEL (GC2NAHW), and one called Don't Get Stung Redux (GC4R629) at a really cool scorpion.
We felt like eating pizza for dinner so we went to Rocky's New York Style Pizza and it was delicious and totally hit the spot. We all ordered our own mini pizza's just because we all couldn't decide on one large one everyone could enjoy. I had olives and pepperoni. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and took everything out of it so we could drive it to a do it yourself wash and vacuum. The place we ended up finding was soooo ghetto. We even encountered a girl going through the garbage cans and taking the stuff she found home with her next door. It was kinda sad.
We vacuumed it first and Ray power washed it. We turned a dump into a nugget of gold!
We went back to the hotel and of course used the pool and hot tub one more time, I called Ben and took a shower before winding down for the night. We used the internet for a bit and then packed up all of our stuff so we didn't have to waste that much time the next morning. I know I will miss the hot weather. I was definitely spoiled down here with the sunshine. Tomorrow will be a long day.
Next Adventure: Saying Goodbye to the California Desert and Giant Dinosaurs on I-10: Day 8
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