We are fine.

Our youngest son Kevin at his Birthday Lunch.

Since I haven’t updated the blog for 2 months we have been hearing from blog Readers asking “if everything is okay.”

We are fine. We left Cape Blanco Lighthouse on October 1st and have been back in our home town of San Jose, California the past few weeks. We have been through the yearly blood test, doctor visits, eye doctors, etc. As well as visiting with our youngest son, Kathy’s parents up in Mariposa (near Yosemite National Park) and close friends. We have also been eating out way too much!

Doctors say we are good to go so, tomorrow we start heading south to Benson, Arizona.

This winter rather than stay at Kartchner Caverns State Park as volunteers; we are planning to stay at the Saguaro Escapee Co-op Park near Benson and only volunteer a day or 2 each week at the Caverns. After volunteering for 8 of the last 10 months we want more days off this winter. However volunteering in the Caverns is too good to pass up.

The Saguaro Escapee Co-op Park can be described as an “active seniors” park, with activities, dinners, entertainment, and many different kinds of groups. Yes, there is a Beading Group! We have never stayed at a RV Park with planned activities and are looking forward to branching out from our usual activities.

Crescent City – California

Our campsite in the redwoods at the Crescent City KOA

As we drove up the coast towards our May volunteer position as Lighthouse Hosts we had a few days until our site would be ready. We arrived in Crescent City, California on a very clear day with great views. However, once we stepped out of the truck we found out that it was only 50 degrees and there was a very strong cold wind. It has been our experience that Crescent City has only four kinds of weather: rainy, foggy, clear and windy, foggy and windy. None the less we decided to spend a few days in Crescent City among the Redwoods and close to the ocean. After our clear and windy arrival we had two days of rain, gray skies and more rain showers. What would have to be called typical April weather around here. (Although admittedly the day we left was the nicest day we have ever seen in Crescent City. Calm, clear and mid-50s all the way up the coast to Bandon, Oregon).

As you can tell in the above picture we had a well protected spot out of the wind. On our third day in Crescent City we had beautiful day with no wind. The prefect day to get some pictures of lighthouses. Our first stop was St. George Point to get pictures of the St. George Reef Lighthouse. As soon as we stepped out of the truck we knew that things were much different than back at camp. The wind was blowing 25 MPH!! However, being the intrepid photographers we are we hiked off to get our pictures.

Yes, the St. George Reef Lighthouse is 8 miles out to see!

As you can see it is a concrete base built on a rock. It took 10 years to build this lighthouse and it was in use from 1892 until 1975. Remember my comment about the weather “only four kinds of weather: rainy, foggy, clear and windy, foggy and windy.”? This must have been a horrible duty station for the Lighthouse Keepers. Here is one quote about conditions at the lighthouse “an occasional fierce storm would generate waves large enough to sweep onto the top of the caisson, seventy feet above the sea, and send water over the top of the lighthouse.”. There are occasional tours of this lighthouse. You arrive by helicopter and the last published cost I found was $195 per person. Given the rainy, foggy and windy conditions even if they were doing tours this time of year we would have still passed.

Sea and Snow View from Point St. George

Battery Point Lighthouse sits on an island at high tide and is on a isthmus at low tide at the entrance to the Crescent City Harbor.Docents give tours of the lighthouse during low tide. Battery Point Lighthouse first started to operate in December of 1856 and is one of California’s original 8 lighthouses.

A closer view of the Battery Point Lighthouse

Crescent City Harbor that was damaged in this past March's Tsunami from Japan

The Tsunami damage was described by a local Councilmen:

"The harbor has been destroyed," Crescent City Councilman Rich Enea said Friday, estimating the damage at millions of dollars. "Thirty-five boats have been crushed and the harbor has major damage. Major damage."

One person that went down to the breakwater to photograph the Tsunami wave as it came in was swept out to sea and drowned.

Bird Notes:

After our time in Pahrump and the few birds there, we are stunned by the numbers of birds we see everywhere. Last week in the Sierra Foothills there where large numbers of birds both by species and number all over the RV Park. Here in Crescent City there are even more! Although, we have not added any life birds to out list we have seen many that we haven’t seen in awhile. Most notable in Crescent City have been a pair of Winter Wrens and Fox Sparrow. Neither is “rare” just hard to find as they spend there time skulking in the shadows and underbrush. We haven’t seen a Winter Wren in California since 2002 nor a Fox Sparrow in California since 2004. Sorry, no pictures of either.

Just to prove that we actually do look at birds here is a shot of Whimbrels on the grass.

More photos of the Crescent City area on the slideshow:

Raider Picture Week 1

Yes, I still need to finish the 2010 Travelogue blog entries but haven’t got back to them yet. However, while sorting through the pictures for the next blog entry I realized that I had not used my poor neglected camera since the first week of October! How did I go from hundreds of pictures a day to no pictures for 3 months?

There is an axiom in photography that the more pictures you take the better photographer you will become. Toward that end many photographers take on a 365 Project. Flickr.com has over 16,000 groups dedicated to 365 Projects. The commitment is to take a picture every single day for a year of some object or theme.  Naturally, trying to do anything everyday is difficult and many people dropout of these projects. Another group of photographers knowing that they couldn’t keep up with a 365 Project or as a way to work up to a 365 Project do a 52 Weeks Project. Flickr.com has just over 1,300 groups dedicated to 52 Week Projects.

In what I hope to be a “two-fer” I am starting a 52 Week Project of:” Pictures of Raider”. My plan is to take and publish a picture of Raider each week of 2011. To complete this project I will also have to have at least one blog posting a week in 2011.

I am hoping that with this plan I will be able to keep the blog more current. Of course it may turnout that I end up with 52 pictures of Raider sleeping and me writing “Nothing interesting happen this week.”

So to get started:

We left San Jose last Monday and headed to Wine Country RV Resort in Paso Robles. This is  the RV Park where we spent our first night as full-timers 3 years ago. Also like 3 years ago we were in town to take our trailer to Sky River RV. This time to have a leaky gray tank replaced under warranty and to have the body damage caused by our tire blowout back in October repaired. As you can imagine this was an all day job so we headed over the hill to Morro Bay. We last visited Morro Bay in November of 2008 you can read about it at blog entry 2008 How are you and where are you. Like last time we came to Morro Bay we let Raider run on the beach. Although, he hates water and won’t go near the surf he LOVES running on sandy beaches. We once again had lunch at the Great American Fish Company. We spent the rest of our time in Morro Bay just watching the waves break and surfers freeze.

Once we had the trailer back and a goodnight’s rest again, as three years ago, we went to see our sisters that live near Magic Mountain\Valencia in southern California. Again the closest RV Park we could get into was in Acton, about 30 miles beyond where they live.

So there we are up-to-date. We are sitting in the Acton KOA and tomorrow we will be heading out to continue our adventures.  

Morro Bay January 2011 slideshow 

North Palm Springs

Snow capped San Grogornio Mountain to the west of our location, at 11,503 feet it is the highest peak in Southern California.

Everyone has heard about Palm Springs. They have endless golf courses, gated communities and very expensive shopping. We however have been at an RV Park in North Palms Springs! This isn’t even a town! It is an unincorporated area that has a a post office and a very small one at that. The RV Park is surrounded by empty desert.

View Larger Map

The above is the Google Satellite picture of the Two Springs RV Resort

As you can probably guess this is a pretty quiet and very relaxing area. Due east of here is the town of Desert Hot Springs. It is just big enough to  have gas stations, grocery stores and places to eat. When I last posted I wrote “so far it has been mostly windy.” Our first day here was very windy (we are just east of a Windmill Farm). We had a 12 hour wind storm that was 20 mph with gust to 50 mph. However since that day the weather here has been SPECTACULAR! While most of the country has had record breaking cold, we have enjoyed lows in the 50s and highs in the mid-70. Now, this was the desert weather we came for!

 

Photo of our campsite

Photo of the Wind Mills across the street with San Jacinto Peak in the background. San Jacinto peak is 10,834 feet tall.

We spent most of our time at North Palms Springs getting back into RV mode after our hectic time in  San Jose and of course, getting ready for the Montana Owner Circle at Quartzsite Arizona.

 

Our first sunset at Quartzsite this year

Are you sure you are still doing a blog?

I will admit I have been a little remiss in blog writing lately, so I will make keeping the blog more current my 2010 New Year resolution. Now all of you can see how well I do at keeping New Year resolutions. 

To bring you up to date. Our visit to San Jose was packed with visits with family, friends between the doctor visits. After all of the doctors, dentist and Vet visits we are all three good to go for another year. For Christmas Day we had Kevin, our youngest son, and his girlfriend, Veronica over for dinner. As always Raider was happy to see his big brother.

Like last year we left San Jose the Monday after Christmas and the traffic jam on Highway I-5 went from one end of the state to the other. Also like last year we did manage to go at the speed limit for the most part. We stopped for the night at Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, also same as last year. As we wrote then, you actually park in the grove, with trees just dripping with delicious oranges, free for the picking. Until you have had one you can’t imagine how good a fresh picked Orange is. Also like last year fellow Montana Owners.COM (MOC) members Butch and Susan were staying at Orange Grove RV Park. In the almost three years we have known them and the several times we have met them on the road, we have learned that no matter where we are Susan will say: “We know a place to eat, do you want to come?”. Of course we always say “Yes”. Susan has a remarkable knowledge of great restaurants no matter where we are. One of her favorites is a Basque/French place in Bakersfield. A lot of food and I know I have never had better Rack of Lamb anywhere. We were joined at dinner by Jim and Vicky MOC members we met at a Montana Owners rally in Oregon this past June. We all had a wonderful time catching up on what we had been doing the past six months since we were last together. We made plans for when we get together again in a couple of weeks in Quartzsite Arizona for another MOC rally.

We left Bakersfield after one night and have arrived in North Palm Springs for a week of hopefully warm days. However, so far it has been mostly windy.

By not writing the blog I missed our very important anniversary of December 26th: we have been on the road fulltime now for two years. I went back and read what I wrote on our one year anniversary and so many of the things I wrote then are still true. “Where has the time gone? It doesn’t seem like we have been on the road a whole year.” If anything this second year seem to go by even faster than the first. “So, how has life on the road been? Incredible!” It remains “Incredible!”. Due to Kathy’s surgeries early in the year none of our 2009 plans happened, but traveling without a plan and letting serendipity show us the way was a wonderful experience. We went to places we didn’t know exist and as always when RVing met many wonderful friendly people.

I wrote last year “No doubt many of you are wondering: where is the best place you have been? There is no “best” place.”. There still is no “best” place but there are many remarkable places. Certainly, a month on the Oregon Coast in June, 3 weeks at Glacier National Park in July, 3 weeks in Western South Dakota (Badlands National Park, Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park and Jewel Cave National Monument) in August, 3 weeks in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in September, 3 weeks in Zion National Park in October! For us total city people our time at the Andersen Farm in Oakes, ND with Terry and Vick were the highlights. This year we learned to stay in one location longer and really get to see the area.

New for me this year was the photography. The shutter counter on my camera says that I have taken an amazing 3,000 picture since I got the camera in May! With the 3 weeks stays in Glacier and Zion National Parks, we did quite a bit more hiking than our previous year. However, our Astronomy and Birding fell way off this year. We didn’t get our telescopes out once all year.  I didn’t even keep a 2009 bird list but, we did see 3 life birds and that brought our Life List to 500 species.

Our plan for year 3 is to do what we didn’t do this year; tour the eastern half of America and if time permits visit eastern Canada as well. As always we will let the weather decide where we go and when we will get there. Hopefully we will get in more birding and astronomy during year 3 than there was in year 2.

Once again, we would like to thank you all for following our travels and we look forward to meeting more of you this coming year.

Yes, we are still doing a blog

 

Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View

WOW, a month since our last posting!

To pickup where our last blog left off:

We stayed two more weeks at the Escapee Park in Pahrump. Kathy beaded everyday, I read and Raider got in his two walks a day. Although, the weather stayed nice the nights kept getting colder and colder. As planned we left Pahrump on November 18th and had a dull, uneventful two day drive to San Jose. We arrived in San Jose just in time for a wet rainy and windy day. After a weekend of laundry, groceries etc. We went to Kathy’s folks place in Mariposa California for Thanksgiving Week. Mariposa is about 40 miles west of Yosemite National Park (about an hour’s drive). There are very few RV Parks in the area and none open this time of year, so we left the trailer in San Jose.

Over the years we have been to Yosemite more times than we can remember and in every month of the year. November in Yosemite is probably the quietest time of the year. Too late for the summer crowds and too early for the winter skiers. We guessed that is had been about 5 years since Kathy and I had been to Yosemite Valley and even longer since her folks had been to Yosemite Valley. With that in mind we decided to take a day trip  to Yosemite.

As you can see from the pictures we had a beautiful fall day. It was a little cool to be sure but sun was shining and the there wasn’t any wind.

 

El Capitan

 

El Capitan up close

Yosemite’s famous waterfalls are reduced to a trickle by November:

Bridal veil Falls

Yosemite Falls

Top of Yosemite Falls

Half Dome

Basket Dome

Thanksgiving was pretty traditional too much food, dinner with Kathy’s folks and her youngest sister and her family.

We are now back in San Jose for Christmas with our youngest son and our yearly doctor and dentist visits.

MOC Lake Siskiyou Rally Part 2

After the 3 day weekend hoards left and it was so QUIET!

Lake Siskiyou is a very nice setting with Mt. Shasta just across the lake, but when full the sites are too close together. Of course, this past weekend was FULL. The weather was fantastic low 80s during the day, so there were a lot of day use people as well as the people camping for the weekend. We had all of the usual holiday weekend stuff, kids running and bicycling all over the place. Every other site had to have their own personal campfire starting at 6 PM, even if it was still in the high 70s and still light out. The REAL problem of the weekend was a Harley Club. Half of the group was tent camping at the top of the campground and the other half were in cabins down by the lake.  None of these people ever walk and Harleys are always noisy. They must have made 1,000 trips a day up or down the road running through the campground. Fortunately they all left about 7 AM on Monday morning and it was quiet after that.

 

Along with checking out the microbrewery, invading a local Mexican restaurant with 48 for dinner, and visiting a REAL GOOD sandwich place called Billy Goats Tavern twice, we did manage to do a little birding. I think we saw what would be expected for the area. Sorry no pictures, I am still too new with the new camera to getting bird pictures. Not to mention they were up at the top of all of the tall pines! Even with a zoom, it didn’t matter! The Bird list includes: Western Tanager, Warbling Vireo, Dark-eyed Junco, American Robin, Stellar’s Jay, White-breasted Nuthatch, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Green Heron, Great-blue Heron, Great Egrets, Western-wood Peewee and an unidentifiable Empidonax flycatcher.

MOC Lake Siskiyou Rally Part 1

This year is the 5^th annual Montana Owners.Com (MOC) Memorial Day Weekend Rally at Lake Siskiyou near the town of Mount Shasta California. The town and Lake Siskiyou are at about 4,000 feet on the slope of Mt Shasta. We have a total of 33 Montana trailers, 66 people and I would guess about 25 – 30 dogs in attendance. We are all located in the same loop of the campground, but there are other people here as well that no doubt feel over run by Montana Owners.

These Rallies are a chance to reunite with friends that we saw while in Quartzsite and to meet in real time friends that we have just written to over the Internet in the Montana Owners Forum.

Although the “Official” start of the rally is Friday evening at 6 PM, about a third of the group arrived on Wednesday (including us), another third arrived on Thursday and the final third have been coming in throughout the day. I would have loved to get pictures off all of the trailers together, but there are just too many trees to get more than a couple trailers at a time.

One of the many advantages to being retired and fulltimer RVers is that we can arrive 3 days before and leave 3 days after a 3 day weekend. As you can imagine this really reduces the amount of traffic we have to deal with during these long weekends.

Another great advantage is you visit places during the week when they are less busy and people have time to just chat. This afternoon we had one of those special encounters. As anyone who has read our blog for very long knows we collect Microbrews, we seek them out as we travel to try the local beers.

Today we visited the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in the town of Weed California. Weed is about 10 miles from Lake Siskiyou and is named after Abner Weed who opened one of the first lumber mills in 1897 and then built a railroad to his mill. I know this being California, you may have thought it was named after a different kind of weed.

While visiting the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company, Kathy struck a conversation with a lady sitting near us and the only other person at the tasting room at the time and we found out that she (Barbara) and her husband are the owners and founders of the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company. She gave us a firsthand account of how they converted an abandoned Creamery, a hazards waste site, in to an award winning microbrew. Barbara went on to tell us how they had a Federal case filed against them for producing Weed Amber Ale and putting bottle caps on it that said “Buy Legal Weed”. The Amber Ale is named after the town founder Abner Weed. Barbara and her husband did win the case, but it is a unique experience for any new startup business to be taken to Federal court.

Slide show MOC Lake Siskiyou Rally Part 1

Kathy adds:

Barbara was a neat lady! They didn't know a thing about making beer when they bought the Old Creamery! Fortunately, you can hire a Brew Master and she lets her husband check "Quality Control"! :) We told her we were on a reconnaissance trip to check out "things to do and see in the area" for our RV Club. Her eyes lit up and said, "Do call before you come so that we have enough staff! But yes, we have plenty of room!!" 

While enjoying the sampler of their brews, you can enjoy watching the brewery in action! They were doing something with the hops when we were there! All of a sudden there was this hoppy aroma!  We both love hoppy beers, so it wasn't an unpleasant fragrance!

link to brewery: http://www.weedales.com/

Little did they know when the bought the property there were all kinds of "hazardous waste" to be removed and certified safe by the State of California BEFORE they could start brewing. However, their hard work has proven out well by getting first and second place awards from the Western Region competitions of microbrews! They had food to eat while you sampled munchies food to keep the blood alcohol in check! But they prefer to focus on the ales and not as a restaurant. What a tasty field trip! :)

I had told her we were a group of 33 Montana Fifth Wheel Owners, staying down at Lake Siskiyou. Explaining that we were on a "Progressive Rally" up to Oregon, checking out local areas. Funny thing is, she was envious of us! She said, "Man, if we could sell this place, that's the first thing I would want to do, go off in our RV and travel!!"  

I had to laugh! One of Grant's dreams for an alternate career opportunity 20 years ago was to open the "Coyote Creek Brewery" near IBM in San Jose!  But then IBM closed their plant and that was end of that idea!

On our way back to camp, it made me really enjoy this life style! We've gone to several places on the off hours and you can really kibbutz with the proprietors and get to know people that do something entirely different than our life style in our "work lives". From the bus driver on our trip from Skagway to the Yukon, who memorized everybody's name, quoted Robert Service and did standup comedy, too! He really was trying to get a job ON the ships!  Or the lady in Nevada that told us about her life in Alaska as a gold miner! This little bitty lady, half of my size, could drive a big earth mover?! Every day is an adventure!

 

Kathy Update, New Photographer added to blog staff and Monterey California

Kathy Update

Kathy had a bit of a setback. Since the surgery she has had no pain. Even while she was in the hospital, she never even eeded aspirin. Early Monday morning of last week she was awaken by a pain similar to what she had back in January. Fortunately, the surgeon was able to see her Monday afternoon. He said that the pain and the area it was in is not uncommon after having a gallbladder removed and that it should pass in a few days. “Apply a heating pad and it should relieve it!” He also said that if it gets worse or continues beyond a week that they would do an ultrasound; so far so good. We are planning to leave here on Tuesday 19th.

Our first stop will be Lake Siskiyou near the town on Mt. Shasta, California for the Annual Montana Owner’s.Com Forum Members Memorial Day Weekend Rally. We will get to see many of the people we were with back in January at Quartzsite and meet MOC members that were not able to come to Quartzsite. After being in one spot for almost 7 weeks we are anxious to get back on the road and continue our adventure.

 New Photographer added to blog staff

Almost every one of the literally thousands of pictures that have appeared in our blog and the attached slideshows were taken by Kathy. There have only been a very few occasions when she has allowed me to borrow her camera to take an occasional picture. She decided to give me my birthday present a month early and bought me a camera of my own (This may be to stop me from asking to borrow hers). So starting with this blog entry some of the pictures will be Kathy’s and others will be mine. I don’t plan on designating which is which as I do the blog so, to help you know which is which, here are some guidelines. If the picture you see looks like one of the many great pictures Kathy has taken in the past, then it is one of Kathy’s pictures. If however you see a picture that is spectacular, that you say to yourself “this picture should be on a calendar”, that is one of mine. LOL

Monterey California

Monterey is like a second hometown to us. In the 30 years we lived in San Jose we made at least monthly trips to Monterey. When we got our small 17 foot travel trailer we went to Monterey almost every weekend. Since Kathy was feeling better and I wanted to try out my new camera, we went to Monterey for the first time in almost two years. We visited many of our old haunts in Monterey and Pacific Grove. We walked Cannery Row and the bike path to Lover’s Point. We watched the waves and the birds a Point Pinos.(Spanish for Pines.) We also took a nostalgic visit to Fishermen’s Warf where we departed from on many Whale Watching and pelagic birding trips. This was by far the most walking that we had done since before Kathy had her surgery in January. When we were done all three of us were tired and sore. Raider got into the truck for the ride home and passed out. He did not want to go for his usual evening walk when we got back to the trailer. Monterey was spectacular as always!

See the slide show of our visit to Monterey

San Jose Visit Update

Most of our time has been spent going to Doctors offices and pre-surgery testing. We have managed to work in a few lunches and dinners with old friends.

THE BIG NEWS is Kathy had her gallbladder removed yesterday and was released from the hospital today. The surgery only took about 30 minutes and she looks and feels much better than her emergency surgery back in January.

We are planning on giving her three weeks for recover and then once again set out on the road.

I tried to convince Kathy that we should post pictures of her surgery scars so that we would have a picture in this blog entry but, she declined.

Back in San Jose – April 2009

Another two weeks without a blog entry! The truth is we haven’t been up to much since we have returned to San Jose, except go to doctor’s appointments or tests that the doctors want run. The good news is that they have determined that Kathy doesn’t have any more holes in her large intestine and that her surgery from January has healed up nicely. The bad news is they have confirmed that she has a gallstone. She has an appointment with a surgeon to discuss what is to be done about that next week.

The Montana after it was waxed.

It is just over 500 miles from Pahrump, Nevada to San Jose, California, so we did it over two days. The first stretch is about 270 miles to Bakersfield, California, with almost all of it across the Mojave Desert. We had a perfect desert spring day for this section. It was low 70s, no wind, visibility at least 50 miles in any direction and a lot of wild flowers. This hasn’t been one of the SPECTALULAR years for wild flowers. but it hasn’t been a bad year either. Unfortunately there aren’t many places to pull over to get pictures of the mile upon miles of wild flowers.  Also, there were countless butterflies, all of whom seem to get smashed on the nose of the Montana as we drove along. Poor Painted Ladies!

As anyone who has ever driven in Los Angles will tell you it is horribly congested all the time, even though they actually have freeways that are 10 lanes across. This congestion is bad for anyone driving in the area, but much worse if you are in a really big long vehicle. Every RVer we know avoids driving in LA if possible and takes California Highway 58 from the central valley to the desert and then picks up the appropriate road heading north, south or east as needed. Most of these people also stop at an RV Park just outside of Bakersfield called “Orange Grove RV Park”. It truly is an RV Park in the middle of an orange grove. When we stopped there at the end of December the navel oranges were perfect for picking and they encourage you to pick them for free. This time of year the oranges are all gone, but the trees are full of orange blossoms. The place smells fantastic!

The second day of our trip to San Jose wasn’t nearly as nice; we had a strong headwind the whole way that really hurt the mileage.

We are back at the same RV Park we stayed at in December, which is close to the old neighborhood and just up the road from an old quarry that is now an undeveloped county park, we take Raider there to run off lead occasionally.  He pretty much runs until exhaustion.

More pictures of the area in spring.

Joshua Tree National Park

When we were first married and still living in Los Angeles, Joshua Tree National Monument was our winter playground. We backpacked or hiked every trail, car camped in every campground and managed to get snowed on twice while camping there. We even took a rock climbing class there one year (what were we thinking?!). Once we moved to San Jose, Joshua Tree National Monument was just too far away to visit very often. However, after an absence of 27 years we have managed to visit Joshua Tree National Park 3 times in the last 4 years, always in March. Joshua Tree became a National Monument in 1936 and was upgraded to a National Park in 1994.

The Park Service describes Joshua Tree National Park as “Two deserts, two large ecosystems whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation, come together at Joshua Tree National Park. Few areas more vividly illustrate the contrast between high and low desert. Below 3,000 feet, the Colorado Desert, occupying the eastern half of the park, is dominated by the abundant creosote bush. Adding interest to this arid land are small strands of spidery ocotillo and jumping cholla cactus. The higher, moister, and slightly cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of the undisciplined-looking Joshua tree, extensive strands of which occur throughout the western half of the park. ”

Unfortunately, all of the campgrounds in the park must have been made back in the 1930s when everyone tent camped, because none of them had room for a modern RV. There aren’t a lot of RV Parks in the area, having tried different RV Parks we settled on Twentynine Palms Resort. It is located only a few miles from the parks east entrance and is quietly located away from the main highway running through the small town of Twentynine Palms.

When we were here three years ago, it was so cold that it snowed one afternoon!  When we were here two years ago it was over 100 degrees. This year the weather was perfect all week. It was mid to upper 70s and calm to light winds.

This has not been a very good year for flowers, but since Joshua Tree National Park’s lowest elevation is 1,200 feet and its highest elevation is 5,814 feet there are some bands of flowers based on the elevation. We managed to find an area with quite a few flowers.

Baker Dam in the Northwest part of the park is usually the largest body of water in the park and the best birding area. The dam was built for cattle ranching in 1900.  When we were here 3 years ago the lake was so full the dam was overflowing and there were birds everywhere. When we were here 2 years ago the lake was only about half full and there were many less birds. This year all that is left of the lake is a puddle and there were only a few Juncos and flycatchers.

Usually the second best place for birds is at Cottonwood Springs near the south entrance to the park. This is an actual palm oasis and even during the current drought there is still some water there. We probably did not arrive there at the best of time as it was near noon and very windy. We did see a few hummingbirds and a wren that would not come out from under its cover.

Even with all of our hiking and travelling in the park the only wildlife we saw were lizards and squirrels and not very many of them.

In the lower part of the park there is an abundance of Cholla and Ocotillio. From experience I can tell you to heed the warning whenever you are around Cholla.

Of course, Kathy is still beading. 

Slideshow of Joshua Tree National Park.