Joshua Tree National Park

Last weekend, we took advantage of the free admission to the National Parks and drove the 2 hours over to Joshua Tree National Park.  We woke the girls up early and left at 6am. We drove right into the sun for a while, so they were happy to try out their new shades.

 The park was beautiful and there were tons of wildflowers and flowering cactuses.  We just missed the Joshua Tree's blossoms by about 1 or 2 weeks. 

 We started out with a short 1 mile loop hike called Hidden Valley.  It goes along inside a huge circle of boulders where cattle thieves used to store their stolen cattle.

 It was pretty and had lots of good rocks to climb.

 I'm proud of Miss Penny who walked the whole thing by herself, including lots of the rocky steps up and down.

 Adjusting shoes.  Our little copy cat follows whatever big sister does!

 Tyler and the girls on the top of a climbing rock.

 We saw several different kinds of lizards and lots of wildflowers.  Bridgette wanted to climb all the boulders and Penny wanted to smell all the flowers.

Next we drove up to Keys View at the top of a peak, so you could see the whole valley and San Andreas Faultline.  When we started walking up to the viewpoint, it was so windy I thought the kids would blow away.  It totally scared them all and we didn't even dare take a picture.  We ran as fast as we could back to the car and then heard about how windy it was up there for the next several hours.

Our next stop was Skull Rock for some lunch and climbing.

 I love this stink face Penny has been giving us lately.  She certainly has spunk!

 Harrison was there too!  He was such a sweet baby, just hanging out most of the time in the carrier sleeping and looking around.

 Skull Rock is behind us.  It is supposed to look like a skull from the erosion.

 Our last stop was the Cholla Cactus Garden.  It was crazy how much Cholla cactus there was growing.  This is on the other side of the park, so there are no Joshua Trees here.

 Penny had fallen asleep in the car so Tyler pushed her around in the stroller asleep and Bridgette had reached the "I'm over this" stage (as evidenced by this picture, haha!), so we headed home right after.

We had a long trip back, got stuck in a little traffic and so stopped for ice cream and a play break at Chick-fil-A.  We had a great time exploring the desert, loved hiking and seeing a different area of California.  The girls loved the desert and finding lizards.  Bridgette was mad we drove home to "normal part of California" and even told me she wants to move to the desert!  I guess that means our visit was a success!