Started out the day by checking out the nature area at the campground check-in – always lovely, knowledgeable people at these NP’s.
Then headed over to other side of the park to do some small hikes: skull rock, arch and heart rock. It was incredibly hot as there wasn’t the cooling breeze like we had yesterday, so we were pretty drained after hiking a few miles in the beating sun.
Later we headed down to the last place we wanted to visit, the Cholla cactus garden. This was in the
lower elevation Colorado desert section of Joshua Tree NP. Until now we have been almost exclusively in the larger part of the park, the higher elevation Mojave desert section. The Joshua Trees only grow in the higher elevations, so it was interesting to see the vegetation change from the Joshuas to the smaller Chollas.
Finally, we found a fabulous viewpoint for the last sunset in Joshua Tree before moving on to Death Valley
-Sally
