Yucca Valley

We had a great time at the Zoo, but now it was time to do something even more special - visit my cousin & his wife whom I haven't seen for MANY years. He lives in Yucca Valley, CA, only a few hours drive from where we camped.

It was an easy drive up I-15 & I-210 and east in I-10 to the Palm Springs area where we went up to the high desert and Yucca Valley.  But talk about traffic!!!  

In Yucca Valley we didn't camp, but were the guests in my cousin's home.  He and his wife were the most gracious and hospitable hosts.  We did a lot of visiting and reminiscing and went to visit my uncle Bill who lives near by.  (Family pictures are not included here to respect privacy.)

However one thing I can show pictures of is our great experience at Pioneertown and Joshua Tree National Park.

Pioneertown started as a live-in Old West motion-picture set, built in the 1940s. The set was designed to provide a place for the actors to live while using their homes in the movie. A number of Westerns and early television shows were filmed in Pioneertown, including The Cisco Kid and Edgar Buchanan's Judge Roy Bean.

The Pioneer Bowl

Roy Rogers, Dick Curtis, and Russell Hayden were among the original developers and investors, and Gene Autry frequently taped his show at the six-lane Pioneer Bowl bowling alley. It was built in 1947 and Rogers himself rolled out the first ball in 1949. School-age children were hired as pinsetters until the installation of automatic pinsetting equipment in the 1950s. According to the Morongo Basin Historical Society, the bowling alley is one of the oldest in continuous use in California.

Darlene was excited to find a music store, but the didn't have any pipe organ selections.  Now she'll have to take up the "squeeze box."

I didn't do it!!!

I looked carefully to see if it said "Gardels."

After I was released from jail in Pioneertown, we drove the few miles over to Joshua Tree NP (see the map above).

Humans have occupied the area encompassed by Joshua Tree National Park's nearly 800,000 acres for thousands of years. 

Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado (part of the Sonoran), come together in Joshua Tree National Park. A fascinating variety of plants and animals make their homes in a land sculpted by strong winds and occasional torrents of rain. Dark night skies, a rich cultural history, and surreal geologic features add to the wonder of this vast wilderness in southern California.

This Joshua Tree is as old as we are, but far more prickly!!

Known as the park namesake, the Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, is a member of the Agave family. The Joshua tree provides a good indicator that you are in the Mojave Desert, but you may also find it growing next to a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert in western Arizona or mixed with pines in the San Bernardino Mountains.

A Joshua Tree blooming

The geologic landscape of Joshua Tree is fascinating.  Geologists believe the face of our modern landscape was born when molten liquid rock, heated by the continuous movement of Earth’s crust, oozed upward and cooled while still below the surface. These plutonic intrusions are  called monzogranite.

The monzogranite developed a system of rectangular joints. One set, oriented roughly horizontally, resulted from the removal—by erosion—of the miles of overlying rock, called gneiss (pronounced “nice”). Another set of joints is oriented vertically, roughly paralleling the contact of the monzogranite with its surrounding rocks. The third set is also vertical but cuts the second set at high angles. The resulting system of joints tended to develop rectangular blocks.

As ground water percolated down through the monzogranite’s joint fractures, it began to transform some hard mineral grains along its path into soft clay, while it loosened and freed grains resistant to solution. Rectangular stones slowly weathered to spheres of hard rock surrounded by soft clay containing loose mineral grains. Imagine holding an ice cube under the faucet. The cube rounds away at the corners first, because that is the part most exposed to the force of the water. A similar thing happened here on a grand scale during a much wetter climate.

After the arrival of the arid climate of recent times, flash floods began washing away the protective ground surface. As they were exposed, the huge eroded boulders settled one on top of another, creating those impressive rock piles we see today. 

From one scenic overlook you can see for MILES.  

The Salton Sea from a scenic overlook in Joshua Tree

The day we went to Joshua Tree was cold and cloudy, with a hint of rain.  All this is a rarity in the desert, but still made for great sightseeing.

I kidded my cousin that if they couldn't come up with any better weather, we would have to move on.  We bid a fond farewell to Uncle Bill, Paula, & Bob and set out for the Phoenix area.

In the Phoenix suburb of Glendale we made an addition to the RV.  Come back to find out what.