A very nice day trip to make from Palm Springs is a trip to Joshua Tree National Park. A special park where two deserts meet, namely the Mojave and Colorado. As a result, nature is quite special.
We drove from Palm Springs to Joshua Tree where the west entrance to the park is located. Once there, you pay an entrance fee for the car ($35 in 2023) and then the exploration of the park begins.
The park is of course known for the beautiful Joshua Trees (Yuccas). These trees have very distinct shapes. Different sizes of trees can be found at the beginning of the park.
The rocks are another point of interest. It seems as if giants once threw the rocks down somewhere, so that these rocks are stacked on top of each other. Different sizes are stacked here and there. Sometimes with huge crevices between the rocks, sometimes it seems as if a piece of rock wants to fall down. It is a very impressive spectacle.
We drive to different viewpoints. You can decide to do one or more hikes, we decide not to do that because the day we are here it is over 40°C (above 104 fahrenheit). Too hot to hike. At the entrance, it is advised to bring enough water. We don’t see many people going hiking.
A very nice viewpoint is keyview. The height of this mountain is over 1,500 meters. From here you have a view of Palm Springs, Salton Sea and other villages in the area.
After we took some pictures we drove back a bit and continued the road towards Cottonwood. On the way there we again see several rock formations such as Hall of Horrors. It is very worthwhile to visit these sites.
Nature changes, sometimes you see barren plains, then green, then purple flowers appear and compete with the green to see who is the most visible and then you have plains full of cacti. This is the peculiarity of the two deserts that come together.
