7th October 2024, 11:17
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| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: Pune, San Diego
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| Weekend Trip to Joshua Tree National Park, Spring 2024  Introduction I’ve been in the US now for a little over three years now, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to get a chance to study and eventually find a job in San Diego, California, regarded as one of the prettiest cities in the US. During the first weekend of March, 2024, my fiancé and I went on a weekend trip to Joshua Tree National Park, which is about 160 miles away, roughly a 2.5-3 hour drive from San Diego. To tell you in a nutshell, Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP), established in 1994, is named after the iconic Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree National Park is where the Mojave and the Colorado deserts intersect, and in my opinion, this is a highly underrated park, which offers great desert scapes, houses a variety of shrubs and trees, and is a great spot for camping and hiking on dry trails with a few unique rock formations. The park has beautiful campsites and photo-spots for viewing the beautiful night-sky and astrophotography too. In fact, it is quite amusing to know that the Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave desert also has snow in the winter. Disclaimer:- I have attempted to document my journey, drive and park experience in Spring 2024, but the actual experience prevalent at the park might be quite variable depending on the road conditions, weather, crowd etc. I highly recommend checking the National Park Service website for this park, for the most accurate, weather, road, access conditions if you plan to visit. Link https://www.nps.gov/jotr/index.htm Last edited by fluidicjoy : 29th March 2025 at 23:22. |
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7th October 2024, 11:19
| #2 |
| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: Pune, San Diego
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| Getting To Joshua Tree National Park  Joshua Tree is well connected by roads to both Los Angeles and San Diego. So if you’re not from Southern California, you may consider flying into LAX, SAN or even the Palm Springs Airport (PSP). The park is driving distance from either of these places, but there is very limited public transport that ploys to towns nearby and so it is highly recommended to rent or drive your own vehicle to explore the park. There is no necessity of having a 4x4 vehicle unless you have a camping permit or reservation for a specific campsite which requires a 4x4 vehicle with increased ground clearance. 
To get ready for the road-trip, I packed the following in my car to be equipped for most scenarios. Road-Trip Stuff
Overall Trip Packing Since Joshua Tree is practically a desert, there are practically no fuel stations, water dispensers, shops or food-stalls inside the national park, and so I’d advise carrying everything you need before you enter the national park through the entry points. Here are some key items from my list:-
With most of them items tossed into the boot, we were off to Joshua Tree!  Last edited by fluidicjoy : 29th March 2025 at 23:28. |
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7th October 2024, 11:28
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| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: Pune, San Diego
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| Driving experience from San Diego We made this trip in my E90 328i, and I am also simultaneously drafting my ownership thread for this vehicle. It was a delight to be behind the wheel in this car, and this trip gave us a little of everything. Howling winds, crazy rain and even a sandstorm but the E90 was glued to the roads amidst all of it.  Drive Up To Joshua Tree The drive from San Diego to Joshua Tree National Park takes about 2-3 hours depending on traffic conditions and the halts you make. The typical distance is about 160-170 miles If you’re driving from San Diego, and the i-15 N is the most popular freeway to take and you will pass along the beautiful town of Escondido and Temecula (known for wineries) which was green in early March, 2024. The entire freeway has plenty of gas stations and food opportunities. Since we had a night’s stay in Joshua Tree, we decided to make a stop at Palm Springs for lunch, before driving the last hour to Joshua Tree. Alternatively, you may also take i-15N and then move to CA-62E if you want to drive closer to the other desert regions. Shortly after we left San Diego, it started to rain heavily, but the car held its own. I’ve noticed most of these freeways experience a lot of crosswinds which can literally push your car into different lanes depending on the wind-speeds. The drive itself was fairly smooth, with just a few bad patches of roads under construction along the i-15. This was when I had a rock chip fly into the windshield along the passenger side pillar, when we were about 20 mins shy of Palm Springs, but I’ll get to this a little later.  After lunch at Palm Springs, we set the navigations for the Cottonwood Visitor Center, Pinto Valley Basin, which is essentially the South Entrance of the Park. This decision came from the fact that a heavy wind advisory was in effect over that weekend, which was expected to die down by Sunday, while the South side of the park was less windy later that afternoon.  Joshua Tree National Park has three main entrances.
Depending on your schedule and weather conditions, you may choose to enter from from either of these gates, but we could tell that the North and West entrances are a lot more popular. From the South Entrance, we drove into the park, and exited from West Gate, which leads you straight into the town of Joshua Tree which was about 5 mins from our AirBNB. The next morning, we re-entered from the North Gate this time, which is minutes away from the town of Twenty Nine Palms. and drove back onto the main loop, before exiting from the West Gate one more time. We drove back to San Diego, and were re-routed along Yucca Valley, Moronga Valley, which was quite a steep downhill patch, which finally circled back onto the i-15, just shy of Riverside. Then, the return journey was essentially similar, passing through Murrieta, Temecula, Escondido, and back into San Diego. It was nice to see snow on the San Bernardino mountains in early spring on our way back. Last edited by fluidicjoy : 29th March 2025 at 23:37. |
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7th October 2024, 11:34
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| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: Pune, San Diego
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| Two-day Joshua Tree itinerary, things to do Joshua Tree National Park for most tourists is at best a two day trip, but if you start early, then you can pretty much cover most touristy spots along with a hike or two even in one day! The only other reason I think you'd need more days here, is if you were into rock climbing and bouldering. Our flexible itinerary Day 1 - SD to Joshua Tree NP via Palm Springs
Day 2 - Brunch at Twenty Nine Palms
 Overview of things to do:- Hikes
Sunrise/Sunset Viewpoints
Stargazing
Shopping
Activities outside the park
Last edited by fluidicjoy : 29th March 2025 at 23:49. |
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7th October 2024, 11:37
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| Accommodation, Food Recommendations There are plenty of affordable accommodation options around the small towns around Joshua Tree National Park, including home-stays, AirBNBs, Hotels, Campsites, Glamping sites etc. If you are more hands-on, you may also reserve campsites inside the National Park itself and setup your own RV, tents etc. We stayed in an AirBNB in the town of Joshua Tree, which was a 10 min drive to the West Entrance. Our Stay AirBNB, where we booked a room with an attached washroom. We met three more travelers in the AirBNB, who were visiting from France, and put up in LA for work.      Food Suggestions
We ate dinner at Sam's Indian Food and had Sunday brunch at Kitchen in the Oasis in TwentyNine Palms and both places had something unique to offer.    Other food and drink suggestions
Cafe suggestions
Grocery Stores
Last edited by fluidicjoy : 29th March 2025 at 23:54. |
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14th October 2024, 07:12
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| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2020 Location: Pune, San Diego
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| Journey Through JTNP! As we started from the South Gate, we drove along a number of interesting spots each complete with a sign to provide a great background on the exhibit in focus. Initially, it felt like it was underwhelming, but it just kept getting better as we drove further into the park. Turkey Flats   Ocotillo Patch It was really interesting to see just a few patches of this succulent, which is native to the Mojave desert.     Cholla Cactus Garden This was a great spot with noticeably a lot more tourists compared to the first one. It was a grove of Chollas (note that the 'L' is pronounced as Y, similar to many Spanish names).       Skull Rock    Fist Rock I realized a lot of these rocks do require the right vantage point, or at times a little bit of imagination.   Split Rock and other miscellaneous rock formations     Last edited by fluidicjoy : 30th March 2025 at 00:40. |
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30th March 2025, 00:50
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| Trails and other vantage points Due to aggressive wind conditions, we couldn't go on all of the trails, but we did get a good feel of the terrain on the Hidden Valley and Barker Dam trail. Some of the key attractions on the trail were a little underwhelming, perhaps due to us visiting right before the summer, but we did find a lot of hidden gems along the way, in the form of vegetation and ancient stone inscriptions.  Hidden Valley Trail         Barker Dam Trail      Key's View We also drove to Key's View, which offered magnificent views of the Coachella Valley, famous for the music festival and a view of snow-capped mountains as well.     Last edited by fluidicjoy : 30th March 2025 at 00:54. |
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30th March 2025, 01:10
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| Closing Remarks    This is perhaps one of the most accurate resource for the most updated info on the park. https://www.nps.gov/jotr/index.htm Park Timings Typically 365 days, 24 hours. Best Times to Visit It turns out that this post might just make it before peak season after all, since JTNP is a great weekend drive in SoCal before the summer kicks in.
Things To Know There are no gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, or hotels. Unlike Yosemite, Joshua Tree National Park is fairly barebones. It is advised to bring all food, water, and supplies before-hand. Cell phone reception is very limited and so it was wise to download offline maps of this area. However, the map provided at the entry gate was very helpful. Pets need to be supervised, and many trails advise against taking pets along due to hot conditions which can cause them to have heat illnesses. Park Entry The park entry requires a paid entry pass, which can be taken at the entry gate. Alternatively, you may also use a valid National Park pass to enter the park. For some reason, there was no check-point on the South entrance of the park, and so in essence, anyone without the pass could also enter and exit from there, although I wouldn’t advise doing this, both due to ethics and practicality. Facility Observations South Entrance check-point has a visitor centre, but this doesn’t seem to be a place where the permit is actively checked. Since we had stopped at the visitor centre to get a park map, I flashed my Entry Card to the Park Ranger, and he gave me a nice National Park tag holder for our car.   It was great to see proper shoulders and stop zones for people to get off and enter trails. Most of the visitors were respectful and systematic, but there were sadly always a few exceptions. Neat washrooms, well maintained for the most part, even in a location so remote, but surprisingly no drinking water sources as I mentioned earlier, anywhere in the park, and this is also clearly mentioned throughout the park literature. Park Roads  The park has some really beautiful roads with great sights all along. Other than some camping sites and sites leading to more rustic trails, the roads are well paved throughout this National Park. I noticed this on all the entrances of the park. The roads have proper shoulders to pull-over and make turn-arounds, and overall, the entire park and premise was very well sign-posted. The whole park actually reminded me heavily of Hampi and Badami, a place we took a road-trip to in 2018, minus the Joshua Trees of course. I must say, Hampi and Badami are a lot prettier when it comes to the landscapes, and I feel it has the potential to attract a lot more visitors, if we improve the infrastructure of our heritage sites. This was my first National Park visit in the US, and since 2024, I've seen two more so far. Joshua Tree was a great start and will always be special since I drove here in my first car, making a lot of memories along the way. Dash Cam Drive Footage It was also my first road trip with my dash-cam, so I was hoping to edit and put together a banger of a Time-lapse drive Dash-cam footage in 4K, but to my misfortune, I didn’t realise I was walking on thin ice, with a 128GB SD card which started over-writing my 8 hour drive. To make matters worse, I was procrastinating the act of pulling out the SD card from the car from the last 4 days, and while I didn’t drive more than 30 mins, it was enough to already over-write half of my return journey. Moral of the story, enjoy your drive through your eyes and fill the views in your heart. Your dash-cam might not be able to help with that. With that, I believe I have softly introduced my 328i to Team-BHP, by taking one out of two on-going threads out of the assembly line.   Closing Thoughts  Overall, I'd definitely recommend a day trip to Joshua Tree if you are in the SoCal area. This National Park is not like many others with magnificent waterfalls or drop-dead gorgeous valleys, but it has a rugged charm and unique vegetation you probably haven't seen before.  It is a great place for easy trails and even stargazing with the backdrop of astounding desert scapes. This trip without have been possible without the support of my partners, my car and my fiancé, and I'm excited to document many more trips with both of them. The next time I would probably visit Joshua Tree, would be when it snows, when it transforms into a winter-desert wonderland, and I already missed my chance earlier this month, but hopefully next year, if I'm still around SoCal.  Last edited by fluidicjoy : 30th March 2025 at 01:37. |
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30th March 2025, 04:31
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30th March 2025, 12:29
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1st April 2025, 05:47
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