Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Jumbo Rocks CG, Joshua Tree NP

Tuesday: (04/14) Lou fixed ham, cheese and cucumber sandwiches for lunch. We decided to move to the other side of the park and have to pass a good sanitary dump on the way with none easily reached on the North side of the park. We decided to have a shower before we dumped a short load on our way to the other side.

Our Jumbo Rocks Campsite
We setup camp in Jumbo Rocks Campground on the North side of the park.

Skull Rock Face In Rock
Skull Rock is well known but a little difficult to get a good photo of because of several trees that are getting too big. i snapped this one using the timer and holding my tripod up over my head to get over some obstructions. The little face in the rock, above right is found on the West side of the road on the return trail.

Lizard Lizard
We saw a few lizards. they come in so many sizes, styles and colorings.

Red Indian Paintbrush Flowers Yellow Flower
The red Indian paintbrush flowers are a new find on this walk. They are all over this side of the park. the yellow flowers are a bit different because their petals turn down rather than up like all the other yellow flowers.

Lou fixed salmon with Spanish rice and fresh asparagus for dinner.

Wednesday: (04/15) Lou fixed a nice omelet with asparagus, peppers, avocado, ham, and cheese.

Don Lou Sugar and Mary
We drove over to Landers (North of Yucca Valley) to see Don's Aunt Mary. We drove back to the Crossroads Cafe for lunch. Lou and I stopped here last year and enjoyed lunch. It's a very nice cafe with unique sandwiches, home made soup and also does breakfast. I had the Grilled Coyote, a chicken and portobello mushroom and cheese sandwich. Lou and Mary shared a Larry's Special the contents of which we can't remember. We all had albondigas soup as well.

Before we left we had packed a nice double rocking yard chair frame into the car and a spare electric motor for our Shopsmith and picked up our mail. The car is getting full, a sure sign that a return home is in the near future.

Dinner was more sandwiches from a Staler Brother Market deli on the way home.

I finally got the pictures to upload and updated these posts with photos:

Thursday: (04/16) Breakfast was peanut butter and jelly English muffins. We drove down to the Live Oak and hiked around along the wash and to the tanks. A quick hike. We then crossed the street and drove up to Split Rock. We hiked around the trails and saw a split rock. Mission accomplished. Since I forgot my camera, no pictures to post. Trust me, it was worth the walk. Not too many flowers but great views of the rocks.

We left our campground at 10am. We headed toward Death Valley. This was a quick visit here but hot weather is on its way so have to move. We caught Highway 247 in Yucca Valley to Barstow where we stopped for a rest and refilled out LPG and gas before catching Highway 15 to Baker where we had some heavy stop and go traffic  for 60 miles. Friday night is not the time to be on Highway 15 heading toward Las Vegas. We then caught highway 127 North to Shoshone and turned onto Highway 178 toward Death valley NP. We're stopped just outside the park, hopefully outside enough to not be bothered tonight. Some type of event  (possibly the police's Death valley to Las Vegas bicycle rally?) is happening along Highway 127 between Baker and Shoshone this weekend so it's a good thing we passed through today. Looks like the roadside will be parked up all the way if the hundreds of porta-pottys we saw is an indication..

No comments:

Post a Comment