Hikes 2009

December 1st: Joshua Tree NP hike, A couple of notes:

We checked out the campground, there is no way a rig bigger than 25 feet could get into the spots - even the host spot was small. The employee housing is Mission 66 (was built during 1966 initiative when they were upgrading the National Parks) - has not been updated since and there are mice who eat up the wires of your truck and they are in the walls and ceilings. The spot for the volunteer range was small, our rig would be tight, there is no shade, and the truck would not fit.

The park ranger had no idea what (the secret word was for all rangers trying to get into a park for free) was -so we had to pay the entrance fee - my volunteer pass was up last month, so we bought the America the Beautiful pass. Then, they did not take credit cards as there is no phone service in the visitor center, the employees use booster repeaters to get the signals. No internet, just gorgeous views. Huge solar array at the maintenance area.

There is a discrepancy with the maps vs. the trailheads in distances. but will discuss later about that.

Very close to the visitor center and before the campground, there is a dump and fresh water. No Charge that I could see. So that is great, We already filled up once, we will be filling up again tomorrow.

	Crack of Noon Club getting a late start again, but finally we are here, ready to take a hike
	But before we can allow ourselves a hike, we need to get water. They not only have water, but they also have a dump. Free of charge! Quite nice for a national park!
	This is where were are now, and the next picture will show the hike route.
	It is the Lost Palms hike, as you can see on this map it shows a distance of 3.6 miles one way. However, at the trailhead, it shows it as 3.4 miles, so maybe we had to go .2 miles to get to the trailhead. Hmmm I guess that makes sense.
	This is Cottonwood Springs, could not really see the spring, not running right now, but those palms are pretty cool.
	At least we thought so!
	Here is Sasha on the trail, we are not so unbelievably hot, as it was a nice day, around 70 degrees F for the hike. I guess getting a late start is not so bad.
	The trail is not that tough, but as we had had one and a half months of no real exercise at all, we were sort of feeling this.
	So much so, we decided to stop here, before the big hill. It was close to 3 pm and we had about three quarters of a mile to go, but then at least 3.5 miles back. Like Sasha said: "getting there is optional, getting back, Mandatory." We will go back another day.
	So a few pictures were taken of us and the area including some that Sasha took. But we were happy that we had gotten as far as we did.
	Artist Rendition
	Ocotillo plant. Beautiful skies, now time to head back.

We headed on back to the trailhead.

ALL POINTS BULLETIN - Hear Ye Hear Ye - Have I got your ATTENTION?

This is the first time in recorded history, at least as far back as we have known each other, that Sasha did not need to drink from my water! OH MY GOD, I can not believe it, but he did not. Of course, he drank like 1.5 liters before we got on the trail, and at least another 1.5 liters while walking. But he did not partake from my offered water bottle.

I tend to hold back on drinking too much, as I do not like to water the trail. Guys of course have it so much easier than us. Thankfully we have larger bladders so that is good. So I just drank a liter of water while on the trail. But I was holding back at least a couple of sips for Sasha, and offered it to him towards the end of the hike, but...

He Refused!

He has broken his record of taking water from me. At least that is good, now I better start packing more water for the next hike.

We got back to the rig and had to refill the water. It was a comedy of errors. Unfortunately, I could not take a picture of it, as it was in the dark (therefore, I had to hold a flashlight in one hand), my other hand held the funnel or tubing; while Sasha was holding a 5 gallon (40 pounds approximately) up in the air on a wobbly ladder. He really needed to be just a little higher, so what was happening was this: Some water would go in, get to the top of the funnel, and slosh out, running down my arms. And the water containers also dripped a bit, so Sasha was getting wet too. Like I said, a comedy in errors until we figured out a way to make it work.

It took one 5 gallon container to figure out a system, but we did, forgoing the funnel for just the tubing. This works differently than the truck camper, but similar idea.

So that done, Sasha was talking BIG about going and getting another load of water but I nixed that idea as it would be in the dark and we were both tired. He thought we would need more water but I was sure we would have enough for our showers, daily routines, and washing the dishes. So we relaxed and had an easy supper, took showers and cleaned up the kitchen. Still had enough water! Yea, I knew we would.

December 2nd: Wednesday: No real hikes but checking out Indio, California and Joshua Tree again.

We have to go and get some other supplies, propane and water and there is a farmer's market/Flea Market/Swap meet that happens every Wednesday and Saturday from 4-10 pm in Indio, CA so we might as well check that out too.

We did and got some great strawberries, oranges and some clothes for me. Warm leggings and pj flannel bottoms, did not spend more than $11 on three pairs. Not bad and softy lofty! It was a fun market. We also went to Home Depot and Walmart.

Sasha got water again at Joshua Tree, while I was working on the website and the pictures we took yesterday. The internet is SOOOO slow right now so the pictures might take a while to happen as well as the website, I will have to load it once we are on the road. Sorry about that.

December 3rd: Thursday: Back to Joshua Tree, but the camera battery was not charged - first mistake in a long time - we forgot to recharge the battery for the camera, so as Sasha was taking some pictures, it closed up. He was like, what is going on, then checked the battery power - zilch, zip, zero, nada, nothing, NO! So while we took some pictures, we were not able to get the ones of the beautiful sunset on Keys Point.

Picture	Explanation
	Pinto People. I just like saying that - but you can click on the picture to get an idea of what this says.
	Explanation of the area, too bad about the bird dropping....
	Unfortunately this was taken too fast and I was not smiling, but that is the mountain behind me.
	At least Sasha was smiling!
	It was called Turkey Flats because a farmer thought he could grow turkeys out here....no water really and far from anything. Well, we all have our dreams.
	Cholla Garden, and the teddy bear cholla.
	These were the last pictures we took before the batteries went dead. That is the way it goes.

But we did go to Cholla Garden - the plants look like light colored teddy bears - sort of. Very neat and that was not too bad. We did a small hike through the garden and another small hike to the Keys Point, but boy, it is starting to get cold - serious wind blowing at the point, we went behind one of the displays to get out of the wind while we watched the sun go down. 

We also went to another casino - this one was called Spotlight 29, close to us in Indio. Paid $27 for dinner, we both got player's club cards, they gave us $10 each to play and we won $35! So it paid for our buffet dinners. Not bad, but we are stuffed.

Got home and relaxed before going to bed.

December 4th: Friday - relaxing today, going to take a walk around our site. There is a dirt road from our campsite. We are going to take that rather than driving up to Joshua Tree. Less driving is always good, and it is nice to see other parts of this area.

Of course, that was the plan that did not happen. It is getting colder here. We found it is cold in quite a few places in the USA - so I guess 60's in the day and 40's in the night is not bad, but tonight is going to be in the 30's and I am cold. So glad I am not in a house though, that would be really hard to heat.

We just did a calculation of how big our rig is (inside diameters) and the bedroom is (this is with the slide out) 132 square feet (12x11 feet), the main room (with slide out) is 148.5 square feet (13.5x11 feet) and the garage is 88 square feet (11x8 feet) for a total of 368.5 square feet living space, but really is more like 280.5 square feet because we do not live in the garage.

Imagine - we had a house that was 2400 square feet! So we are down to almost one tenth that size. And we feel like this is a huge place!

December 5th: Saturday - we are going to go back on the hike today, hopefully this time around we will get all the way to the end. It is much colder here, and they are talking about major amounts of rain. Not a good idea to stay, so tomorrow we will leave this area and head east, ultimately to go to Texas.

Hike was great, will tell all tomorrow. Sasha went 7.4 miles I went 7.0 miles. All good and a few pictures to boot!

This hike we made better time, we left at 12:25 and got to the end around 2:15 pm, 2 hours to go about 3.5 miles. The vexing thing was that there was no mile marker 3 so when we were walking towards the end, we kept thinking how long it would take us to get to the end. We met some folks coming the other way and asked one how far away the end was, and he said (this was when we had just past the two mile marker) that it was 1.7 miles away. He said that it was a little confusing with this trail as far as where things are. When we were about 2.5 or almost three miles in, we met someone else who told us how far away we were. But there was no 3 mile marker.

We figure if we leave the end by 3 pm, we would be able to get back in about 2 hours. I did not go down to the lost palms, but Sasha did so he had an extra 0.2 miles one way (0.4 round trip). Still, I was able to see the lost palms and we do have pictures - they were very beautiful, but I wanted to be where the sun was shining, because I was kind of cold once we stopped walking.

We still are the Crack of Noon Club, not getting to the trail until late  but oh well, as long as we don't dilly dally too much getting back we should be fine. And going on a Saturday was good, because there are other people on the trail.

One of the groups that was going back to the trailhead, there was an older lady trailing behind everyone else. She was holding pine berries in her hand! I actually spoke to her and told her that she better not see a ranger on the trail as you are not supposed to pick plants in a National Park. She said, "Yes, I know!" I could not believe her - and the sheer shock of someone picking something in a National Park, well, that was on my face as we walked away. Thing is, if she knows that it is bad, WHY DO IT? Hello, duh!

So I noticed what type of plant and berries and we took pictures of it. I do not know the pine, but if someone could let me know in the guestbook, that would be great.

Of course, if everyone did what she did, we would not have plants left in the national parks, nor anything else; that is what Leave No Trace means: Take only pictures, leave only footprints.

Anyway, we continued our walk to the end of the trail, Here are some of the pictures we took:

Picture	Explanation
	The Lost Palms - the oasis that we hiked to.
	Me and the Palms
	The Lost Palms sign
	The Palms - as Sasha is hiking towards them
	The Palms close up
	Beautiful Blue Skies
	Sasha and the Palms
	This was where we had stopped the previous time, with the interesting tree.
	This is the tree that the lady took the berries from.
	These were the berries that she holding - so I guess I put the fear of a ranger coming by that made her drop the berries. Of course, the berries will go to waste, but maybe some animals will go for them. Don't know.

We got back from the trail with a couple minutes before the sun went down. We managed to get back to the truck in an hour and 40 minutes, so faster than we did before.

We got back to the RV and had dinner, and relaxed. We decided that tomorrow we would leave the Joshua Tree NP area, to head to Texas. We had been here a week, and there was talk of rain. Now this is not a big deal if you are on pavement, but we were not, so we decided to go.

December 6th, Sunday: Crack of Noon Club happens again! We did not leave the site until about 1 pm. Very quick on hitching up, we are getting better and better at that. We went one last time into Joshua Tree NP to dump and get water, as well as going to the visitor center where I could get some postcards and drop off some recycling.

We finally headed out around 3 pm and headed out to Arizona first. We did actually get to Arizona before the night fell.

Where are they now? On The Road Again to Arizona & New Mexico.