Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Day 56 - South Entrance to Joshua Tree

After three days of going to see museums and places, today we are not really going anywhere. We did go to the south entrance of Joshua Tree Natl Park where there was a nature walk with lots of flowers in bloom. All of the rainfall they’ve had around here the last couple of weeks has brought a lot of color to the desert. I have no idea what any of the flowers are but just took a couple of snapshots showing them off.

In the picture on the right, you can see I-10 in the background. We are camped about four miles down the road. The Chiriaco family built the gas station/restaurant/store before the highway was built. They also raised the funding and governmental support to build the General Patton museum and own the land that the free campground is on. Lots of travelers services. I had taken out some salmon to thaw yesterday for dinner but it was still pretty frozen at 6pm. No problem, just walk down to the restaurant. Having these services close by the free campground has been really nice and even though this isn’t “boondocking”, it’s convenient. We aren’t watching our water consumption as carefully as we did at Quartzsite so I added the ten gallons of water that I had been carrying around in the truck. Each five-gallon container took only a coupe of minutes to drain into the tank.

Tomorrow morning, we move on to another Thousand Trails RV park in Palm Desert for ten nights. We only made it to 98% on the battery bank due to cloudy conditions this afternoon. This was after a completely clear morning. Then I ran it down to 90% by running the microwave and the Instant Pot making dinner.

9 comments:

  1. Man it appears I'm missing quite the blooming of the desert! That's ok though, like you, I've no idea what the flowers are and too lazy to research it.

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    1. I think we were told that it’s a “Super Bloom” due to all the recent rainfall. SandraC from Fairbanks texted “California poppies and lupine”.

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  2. An interesting twist to the boondocking experience ;-)

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    1. I think that the proximity to services is nice. No dump station, trash or water but still convenient.

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  3. Ah, convenience. The bloom looks beautiful.

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    1. Convenience is nice. I like the free camping option but appreciate the proximity of services. The blooming of the desert was pretty nice. Especially now when I’m sitting on a taxiway at SeaTac.

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  4. What a treat to be there for the super bloom!

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    1. The hills around here in southern CA are covered with poppies (and people) now.

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  5. Yay for the poppies, not so much for the people. Lol

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