Joshua Tree National Park: Hidden Valley

A hundred years ago, the Mojave and particularly Hidden Valley received a good bit more precipitation than now, enough to support tall grasses and a fledgling cattle industry. The Valley was first used by rustlers, story goes, then by the Keys family, who ranched in the area until the 1950s. These days, it is the domain chiefly of tourists and rock climbers. Toward the end of our long day, we did the hike around Hidden Valley, enjoying, close-up, ever more of the fabulous monzogranite rock heaps and piles. I'll just let the pix take over...

Joshua Tree National Park: Keys View

Later we drove up to Keys View, a high point in the park's southwestern periphery, for a magnificent view of the Coachella Valley, from the Salton Sea to past Palm Springs. It was an unusually clear day, and we could easily see Signal Mountain, near the border with Mexico, 95 miles away.

A good bit of Coachella valley, Salton Sea on the left, Palm
Springs on the right

Humongous, California-size wind farm to the right

Helpful signage; click to enlarge

More of the valley

Salton Sea and Signal Mountain in the 95 mile distance; the
Salton Sea is a giant salt lake, formed, inadvertently, when a
dike burst on the Colorado River in the early 1900s; a lake
had been there on and off for aeons; the dike was repaired after
2 years, and the lake is sustained chiefly by agricultural runoff
from the Imperial and Coachella valleys; the salt content is
much higher than that of the oceans, and few species of fish
now survive in it; it is a birder's paradise, however, with over
400 species observed; it sits on the intersection of
three different major faults, including the San Andreas; and it
is but a few feet higher than Death Valley, that is, a couple
hundred feet below sea level; we decided to pass on visiting
the Salton Sea

Palm Springs is said to have nearly 100 golf courses

Thus

Panoramic shot

Joshua Tree National Park: Geology Road Tour

Both of us wish we had retained more of the geology courses we took in college. On the other hand, that was a long time ago, and geology has changed much. "Plate tectonics" was the merest conjecture way back then. Perhaps it's not too late to learn a little more. But I digress.

The kind of formation in Joshua Tree NP that interests us is something we have seen, we think, in a few other places...Brittany, New Zealand, and, mostly, Homestake Pass, near Butte, Montana. Wildly piled and eroded rocks, big rocks, rounded in some dimensions, and not something one can easily explain by glaciation, wind and water, etc. The formations here are something called monzogranite, igneous rock that formed of magma and fractured mostly below the surface. In Joshua Tree NPs' case, the monzogranite formed and eroded, in uplifts, some 15 miles below the surface gneiss, which over some hundreds of millions of years, has mostly eroded away. What one sees in JTNP are humongous rock piles, or insel bergs, island mountains, which, seen from a distance, look like they must be sandstone, but which are really granite, the kind of rough granite favored by rock climbers everywhere. Joshua Tree attracts more than its share of climbers.

Anyhow, we drove the "geology road tour," an 18-mile partly 4WD drive, which, via pamphlet and signage, explains much of the geology of the area and more.

Rock piles at Joshua Tree

Thus

Thus

And thus

What the stuff looks like close up; hard as a rock, too

More piles

Ditto

Ditto

And ditto

Blue gneiss eroding off the monzogranite

Up closer

The road ahead

Shifting into 4WD now, heading across washes and a dry lake

Lots of mining around here in days of old; and target practice
(Ken, note)

The road goes ever on

But we take the one marked "exit"

A bit later, back on the main road, we are exploring the Hall of
Horrors and other rock-climbing areas

Thus

And thus

Joshua Tree National Park: Jumbo Rocks

We did not have high expectations of Joshua Tree National Park: we had seen a few (million) Joshua Trees en route to Laughlin and did not find them interesting or attractive. Indeed, the Joshua Tree is not even a tree. But JTNP is a vast place, encompassing much of two major desert systems, the Mojave and the Colorado, and there is much to look at and do apart from the Joshua Trees. They're only in the Mojave part of the park anyway.

This is a Joshua Tree, one of the bigger and
healthier specimens...seen one...

We were rather taken by the rocks in the park, the Mojave part,
and conversations with a ranger led us to camp first at the Jumbo
Rocks campground

Thus

Our campsite

And the next morning we explored a bit more of the ground
behind our campsite

And I'll just let the pix take over...

Ouch!

Across the loop, campers included a young couple from
Australia, a party from Big Timber, Montana, and a guy from
Ontario

Looking back across to our site

Thus

We had already resolved to spend a little more time in this
park, to see all the interesting formations

Getting Our Kicks

Our next stop was Joshua Tree National Park in California, so we headed south out of Laughlin on route 95 and then Interstate 40 and then some other roads, and, eventually, found ourselves on The Mother Road, as Steinbeck called it, old Route 66, now, in these parts, San Bernardino County route 66.

The scenery is stark+++; Vicki singing "I've been
through the desert in a camper with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain..."

We were not impressed with San Bernardino County route 66
until, at length, we crossed some of the old markers

Approaching the Amboy crater, deep in Mojave country

Unlike most establishments and settlements along old route 66,
Roy's still shows vital signs, just barely

Not so, the Amboy School

You leave route 66 en route to 29 Palms and cross Bristol Lake,
a dry lake that has been mined for (sodium) chloride for a
century or so

What contemporary chloride mining looks like to low-flying
extraterrestrials

The 50 or so miles around 29 Palms and the entrance to Joshua
Tree National Park  are studded, so to speak, every 5 acres or
so, with little cabins or huts or hovels, such as the above, mostly
boarded up or burned down; certainly one of the more interesting
sights along this otherwise, um, stark, drive; a park ranger later
explained to us they are vestiges of a homesteading act in the
50s, and some thousands of people, mostly southern Californians,
eager to build and prove up their five acres for free; sic transit,
Gloria