The day after Thanksgiving is always a day off work, right? That’s also true for our mission work: with the holiday behind us, we found ourselves with a free day. It was sort of an odd feeling– for six months we’ve been busy every day and now we had time to do something on our own. After a bit of thought, we decided on Joshua Tree National Park.
El Centro is blisteringly hot in the summer, and also very flat. The environs are all farmland or a dusty wasteland. That means there hasn’t been much opportunity to hike, which is one of my favorite activities. I was excited to get out and put some miles under my feet (and I don’t mean running around town for exercise). We drove up to the park and spent the day exploring.
The cholla “forest” was fascinating. These cacti look like short, fun, fluffy trees, right?
I knew from previous experience that cholla are not to be trifled with. What looks fuzzy is a tight group of tiny, very persistent spines. Pepper learned the hard way when she accidentally brushed against a few clumps lying on the ground. They stuck into the flesh of her legs, as well as the fabric of her shoes.
This doesn’t look bad, but we had to carefully pluck dozens of spines from her skin. Later in the day, her ankle was bruised and had a whole group of little blood spots from the spines. Ouch.
There were awesome rock formations to climb. This area is mostly sandstone, which is rough and “sticky”, making it fabulous for traction. We spent a while wandering and scaling these massive piles of rocks.
The desert plant life was really interesting, although it didn’t have much variation. There were maybe half a dozen distinct types of plants in the park.
We weren’t able to do any of the “serious” hikes in the park, because they were quite long and would’ve required the entire day or even an overnight itinerary. But we tackled a few short ones, as well as one that was several miles in length.
It was great to wander the desert. The sky was overcast all day, and the temperature hovered in the mid-50s, so it was the perfect temperature for hiking. The Joshua trees are fascinating and sort of otherworldly.
After a long day, we headed out of the park and looked for a place to grab dinner. We stumbled on a hole-in-the-wall pizza place that turned out to be really good… the best pizza we’ve had since moving here! And as everyone knows, after a good solid day of hiking, pizza is especially delicious.
I’m grateful we had an opportunity to do some hiking again. It’s good for my soul.