Joshua Tree National Park, a scary place for me!

Dad and I went to another one of those parks that don’t let me go on the trails, even with a leash. At least I got to go for a day trip with Dad in the car. That beats sitting around the motorhome and watching the flies land on my nose. I spend a lot of time looking out the car window, but it’s something different to do, so I like it.

Another National Park where I have to stay in the car (most of the time).

This park has a lot of strange looking short trees and big rounded rocks. Dad calls it Joshua Tree National Park. Dad says it’s in the very large high desert called Mojave in Southern California (that’s a place where not many animals live, except under ground because it’s so hot all the time.)

I barked at these strange looking things. I was afraid they would attack us!

It’s not a very long drive from Silent Valley Club, about an hour East by car. On the way there were a very lot of really tall, thin, white poles with moving sticks on top. I barked at them because they were kind of scary, but Dad says they are windmills that humans use to make power from the wind. While I was barking, Dad called me Don Quixote. Dad says he was an old near-sighted man that used to attack windmills because he thought they were attacking soldiers.

There's a lot of trees and funny rocks here.

Not very many humans were at this park today. Dad and I stopped a lot so he could, yes, you guessed it again, TAKE PHOTOS. He likes to take photos of the strange trees and rocks. The trees have scales on them and grow in twisted shapes. The rocks are big and look like giant monsters to me. They are rounded and grouped together so that they appear to me to be a large number of very large scary squirrels or some other type of scary thing. Because there were so few humans around, Dad would let me run off-leash near the car. There were lots of strange smells there. I know I smelled coyote and some type of squirrels, but there were still a lot of things I couldn’t identify. Very interesting to say the least!

The San Andreas Fault can be seen along the black line. It marks where the land moves opposite on each side. Scary!

We drove a long way to the top of a big hill that overlooked all of the world (or at least Palm Springs says Dad). From there we also saw a very interesting thing he called the San Andreas Fault. This is a big line of small mountains and crevasses that marks where the land on the South moves in an opposite direction from the land on the North. I don’t think I want to play near it because it might catch me and swallow me up. Dad says it shakes the ground when it moves and creates earthquakes. He says in 3 million years the land we are looking at will be 100 miles further East. (I don’t think I’ll be here to see it. I’ll probably be in Idaho by then.)

Dad said there was a small squirrel over that wall. I gotta see for myself!


The Antelope Squirrel uses his tail to shade him from the hot desert sun!

Dad let me out at the top so I could see an interesting little squirrel. Dad said it was a small Antelope Squirrel. It uses it’s large tail to shade itself from the sun. (Good idea, maybe I should do that!) It was quite inviting, but Dad said I couldn’t run after it because it was protected in the National Park. It was fun to stare at it though. He stared back at me and we just sat there for quite a while wondering what the other would do. Eventually Dad put my leash on and walked me around the parking lot where I could smell a lot of interesting things. That’s one of the fun parts about going on a car trip. You get to smell new and exciting smells and see new animals.

See the little Antelope Squirrel. We each wondered what the other would do!

We left the hill and went along a long dirt road called Queens road. Dad stopped and let me out without a leash because there were no humans around and he knew I wouldn’t run away or after any small creature. I just smelled around and looked at the strange trees. They looked like thin humans with many arms. Scary! Dad says the Joshua Tree is well adapted to the very hot and dry desert and that’s why it looks so strange. We had lunch there and enjoyed the quiet and watched the clouds roll in. (Dad gave me some of his crackers.) I think there was a storm coming in because lots of very dark clouds were filling the sky above.

We stopped here for lunch and I got to sniff around and look at the trees that looked like humans with lots of arms.


I barked at this. I thought it looked like a big dog! Dad says it was really a bunch of eroded rocks.

Some of the rocks look like animals. I started barking at one because it looked like a big dog. Dad assured me that it was just a bunch of rocks, but I was not sure. Another one looked like a human skull. This is a scary place. I want to go home! If that wasn’t enough to drive me away, watch out for the sticky plants. Dad calls them cactus and they grow all over the place. They have long sharp spikes that will go all the way through my coat and pinch me! Ouch!! A guy has to watch where he steps out here. Plus Dad says I always have to watch out for the Rattlesnakes because they can bite me and kill me. I don’t want to be killed, so let’s go home!

Don't you think this looks like a big scary human? Nope, it's just rocks.

The cactus poke you in the skin and hurt! Watch where you walk around here.

After this trip, I don’t think I’ll worry about staying in the car so much. It’s a lot safer in the car and I can still smell some things from a distance! We had a long boring ride home on the fast highway. But we stopped at a rest stop and I got to see these 3 small dogs that the owners said they rescued from far-away in Chile. I don’t know why they were in a bowl of Chili , but hey, stranger things have happened.

I was ready to leave! Dad let's go. Is that a rattlesnake?

I was glad to see Mom again after such a scary trip and she was glad to see me (as usual).

Well, hope you enjoyed my report. Stay away from Joshua Tree National Park if big rocks scare you like they did me! Dad likes it there because it is quiet and there are a lot of interesting textures and shapes to photograph. He wants to visit in Spring so he can see more birds that travel through the park. I think I'll stay home.

Arf

Reggie