This was the first park in a set of five that I did during my first trip to California.This was my second big trip – and this series of parks was what really got me excited about hitting all 59 national parks. Its funny because a lot of people ask me if they all start to look the same. From the outside I can see how someone may think that – but just take one look at my blog posts and you can see how diverse they are! No two parks look the same!! The temperature when I drove in to this park was in the high 80s – it was perfect! Nice dry heat. I drove the road into the park and just picked a few hikes. Remember this was still one of my first so I wasn’t as skilled at all of the research.
This was my first time really hiking in the desert, so I was paying really close attention to how much water I was drinking. No heat stroke here! I really love photographing these twisting branches with the blue sky backdrop. The trees themselves were very bizarre! Bigger than I was expecting and they have an eerie look to them.
My campsite was pretty amazing. When the sun finally went down I saw more stars than I ever remember seeing in my life at that point. Unfortunately I hadn’t yet developed my night sky photography skills so those will live on only in my memory.
There were some stunning vista points, always including the lecture about air pollution and how much worse it is getting. I did add my own cairn to the collection, not sure if it symbolized anything but it was still fun!
Its been almost two years since this trip so I don’t remember as much sadly! But what I do remember was that is was a good time. Will probably make it back to this one some day to explore some more!
Kelsey's Climb to 59 (+4) 