A weekend in Joshua Tree

I had the opportunity to take a trip out to Joshua Tree National Park recently, and while it was only a few days away it was great to get out in nature and explore a little off the beaten path.

While we didn't stay in the actual town of Joshua Tree, we stayed in nearby Twentynine Palms, which still only gave us a 15 min drive to one of the entrances to the park. We found a great AirBnb that was on a large plot of land with literally nothing nearby so that forced us to find other things to do as well as do a bunch of cooking at home.

The stargazing out here was pretty awesome, although I am realizing I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did about long exposure star photos, and this was the best shot that I got of that attempt. The stars looked better in person, but the light trails and light pollution over the mountain was what made this photo for me.

In the actual park we drove the main park loop, which gave us a good view of all there was to see. It was wild being in the desert but having snow capped peaks in the background. Also apparently Joshua Tree is a great place to get some climbing in as well, as we saw people doing some lead climbing on a large rock formation on our drive through the park.

The only actual hike we did was the Secret Chasm of Doom, which really wasn't all that secret as we ran into plenty of people doing the same thing. Although this wasn't really a hike, more just jumping over and under rocks in one of the main parts of the park. You can read more about how to find the "secret" here.

Once in the park we didn't have signal, and we only had the first part of the guide pulled up to find the chasm of doom so spent a long time wandering around the rock wondering where the entrance was. We overshot it by a mile, but at least gave an opportunity to get some great photos of Joshua Tree.

While the most off-roading we did was the well maintained dirt road to get to the AirBnb, it made for some great photo op's of my friend's 4Runner.

Unless you're not from the desert, there isn't much too look at along the drive to the Joshua Tree area, just flat desert and mountains off in the distance as far as the eye can see. If driving the "avoid highways" route from Phoenix you end up passing through a few small (very small) desert towns, the largest probably being Parker, AZ.

Overall a great weekend getaway with some close friends, and while the weather wasn't much different from Phoenix, the feeling of being semi off-the-grid was great, and would highly recommend this for anyone looking for a quick weekend getaway.