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We were up early, had breakfast, packed a lunch and off we went, headed for the Mojave Desert and a day at Joshua Tree National Park.
Not far from Big Bear we passed Baldwin Lake which was totally dry. We dropped quickly, the elevation markers counting down til we were popping our ears and leaving the forest way behind us. The road was very windy with
loads of u turns explaining why it takes an hour and forty to go just 38 miles. It became an almost alien landscape, dry with low set scrub,the Seuss like Joshua trees & weird cactus with the bare dry mountains as a backdrop in all directions.
The winding roads became long straight ribbons that looked like they went on forever. The temps increased and if not for a breeze would've been uncomfortable. We passed a series of what looks to be solar farms under construction and a massive open cut operation run by Mitsubishi Concrete co which just added to the overall feeling of a barren landscape. Here and there we came across pockets of habitation, small simple houses set amid the dry patchy scrub with no signs of green at all.
Closer to towns the houses got bigger, more like we are used to and small to medium businesses appeared along the road.
After a quick stop at the park visitor centre at Joshua Tree to grab a map we entered Joshua Tree National Park using our America the beautiful pass for the first time. It's a world apart from our usual world, super dry with massive piles of split boulders everywhere, cactus in all sorts of wild forms and of course lots of Joshua trees. We stopped a number of times to explore a little off the road, climbed some of the rock formations and generally checked it all out. Pete was his usual mountain goat self, clambering up and over the rocks with ease much as he used to as a kid in the Victorian Alps. Everywhere we wandered was like a movie set from the old style westerns, the badlands, places the bad guys would hole up and get hunted down by the sheriff.
All we found as far as wildlife went was some antelope ground squirrels. We hiked down to an old dam built back when the area was the preserve of cattle ranchers who've long since moved on as the rainfall has decreased from over 10 inches per year to the current 2-3. There's still water in the dam so around it is a bit of an oasis, much greener and a low buzz of insects. Along the trail we spotted a few lizards & some eagles soaring above. We heard the buzz of bees and finally hunted them down to a split rock where they could be seen entering and exiting their hive. Wonder if this is where in the Mojave Bear Grills got badly stung after mistakenly thinking he'd smoked them into submission? It got up to about 32C but felt hotter due to the lack of cover and dryness of the desert air.
We exited the park at the town of 29 Palms and headed back to Big Bear Lake, a two hour drive. Climbing back up the 3000 feet the temps slowly dropped to eventually be 19C as we got back to BBL.
We collected some soup and chicken from Vons and sat on our stoop to eat dinner. A short drive to view the sunset led us to a very posh part of town, huge houses and even green lawns and lush gardens, one complete with a white tail bunny casually grazing on the lawn.
Back to our cabin, a spa & some wine and so ends our second day at Big Bear Lake.
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