This was our gorgeous campsite in Joshua Tree:

The Park is named after it’s most prominent and famous inhabitants: Joshua trees (see below). They only grow in California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and northwestern Mexico but thrive best in open grassland in Joshua Tree National Park. Some trees live for hundreds of years, some even survive a thousand years.

Scientists fear that the Joshua Tree will be a victim of climate change and predict that 90% of its population will be lost by the end of the century. 😥 Therefore, they are carefully protected. 😌

Upon arrival we hiked to ‘Skull rock’ right away to make the most of our short stay. We were thrilled to see that the rocks were very different yet again.

At night we sat outside and watched the sky. Boy, we’ve never seen so many stars in our lives! It was just incredible. ✨⭐🌟 We tried to capture the scene but didn’t manage. This is the best we could do:

The next day we walked two easy trails: the ‘Hidden Valley ‘ which leads to some petroglyphes (ancient rock carvings) as well as a trail called “Barker Dam and Wallstreet Mill”. It takes you to what’s left of the goldrush era.

It’s so astounding that the rocks are so different in the various places we’ve seen in the US so far.

Rather late in the day we decided to hike the ‘Panorama Loop trail’. It offered extraordinary 360° views of the surroundings. 🤩

Going back to the campsite we saw another magnificent sunset. 🌄

What a day! 🤩

This was our site at the ‘Wholes in the wall’ campground in the Mojave desert:

Believe it or not, there are plenty of plants in the desert and it’s beautiful!

But it also has its pitfalls. We were just about to set out for our first walk and thinking about whether the area was any good for an early morning run when we came across a sign with lots of information about wildlife in the area.

It warned about the ‘Mojave rattlesnake ‘. 🐍 We did the only thing you are not supposed to do: Google it 🙈 Wikipedia kindly informed us that the Mojave rattlesnake is the most aggressive and most venomous of all rattlesnakes. 👌🙈🤣 Sometimes it’s better to just not know….

The campground was actually named after the most famous trail there: the ‘Wholes in the Wall’ trail.

Here’s the reason for the somewhat weird name: 🙃

At the last part of the trail you get to climb up the canyon 🤩

And afterwards you are rewarded with a nice view!

Nature trail back to the campground 😊