As you probably already know if you follow me on Instagram, I've recently come back from a two week road trip around the western US, covering California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Every Monday for the next couple of weeks (probably around 10-12 depending on how I split up a couple of the later posts) I'll be posting a little update on some of the things that we got up to whilst there.
Joshua Tree National Park, California, was our first stop. This area really confused Chris, who had never been to the US before. His expectations of California were much greener and scenic, and so he wasn't expecting his first impressions to be of such a harsh landscape!
We went to Joshua Tree with very limited knowledge, as for whatever reason, Joshua Tree just isn't a particularly popular one to visit. You just can't find the information that you can on other parks as it doesn't attract the fans that other parks do - despite that, Joshua Tree ended up being one of our favourites.
Joshua Tree is a park that you drive around in yourself. There's no need for shuttles or anything like that, just head off by yourself. As mentioned, it just isn't that popular a park, and therefore pretty much everywhere we went we were on our own and could go for ages without seeing another car or person.
It's a bit of an odd place, as the map you get contains the main sights, however there are frequently signposts alerting you to something of interest there. However, there is never any indication of what exactly it is! Sometimes you'll find an interesting rocky area like the one shown here, sometimes a bit of information, sometimes a particularly tall tree!
Bees were a problem. You were asked to turn your air con off whenever within about ten minutes of where the bees were currently swarming. The bees were actually completely non aggressive, but you definitely noticed which cars had turned their air con off and which ones hadn't - in a car park of about six cars, one car was being completely swarmed by them!
It was such a hot day here, but because most of the day was spent in the car it wasn't that bad. Apart from a quite small one we didn't do any hikes so I don't know how bad they would have been to do.
We stayed in the gateway town to Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms. This was a pretty little town, full of artwork and other quirks. It was a very friendly area and it was a shame we didn't have time to sample more of the food options. As we had a first timer to America with us, we went to Dennys instead as Chris needed introductions to all of the food chains - but we actually don't regret this either, as Dennys is delicious!
Part two moves us on to Arizona, where we explored
Scottsdale and Fountain Hills!
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