Joshua Tree and Palm Springs

On our way down to palm springs we stopped just outside the Kelso dunes in the Mojave desert,  in the Mojave National Preserve. Although there are no camping signs most places, about 200 meters down the road from the trail head there is a pullout on the left which doesn't have signs... so we slept there.  The moon has just passed its first quarter, and lit up the dunes and the desert so that everything was colored in silvers and greys.  It was a lovely night in the middle of nowhere.

Athena's ukulele balances amazingly well.

In the morning we headed down towards palm springs, just to the east of L.A.  We ended up on Route 66 on the way, which is a really weird road.  There are displays everywhere, just random piles of semi-ordered junk on the side of the road.  After a spray-painted cactus ( some sort of Cylindropuntia, although usually they aren't purple, blue, pink and orange ) and some Shi ( Chinese guardian lions ) we found a dead tree covered with old pairs of shoes.  Many of them had things written on them with sharpies.  Luckily I had an old pair of shoes... so i left them.  No silly message on mine, just a bit of good old fashioned littering in the guise of an old Route 66 tradition.  I did a bit of googling and apparently "Shoe Trees" are a thing that some people get really excited about.  What an odd world.

A dead tree covered in shoes.

We wanted to drive through Joshua Tree on the way to palm springs. ( I collect National Parks maps, and don't have that one yet. )  The park straddles the Colorado Desert and the Mojave Desert, making it ecologically cool in addition to the awesome climbing.  Unfortunately 110 degrees is a bit hot for climbing so there was none of that.   On the drive through from south to north you see the land change from mostly short cactus and scrub ( cholla cactus being most common ) to the odd forests of the Joshua Tree, from which the park gets its name.  The J-Trees are not in fact a tree, but an overgrown member of the yucca family ( hence the Latin name Yucca Brevifolia ).  They even get the yucca like flower spikes on top, which I guess I should have expected as they are in fact just large yuccas.

Token picture of me next to a giant Yucca masquerading as a tree.

Apparently it was some Mormon settlers that named the trees, in reference to the biblical story of Joshua.  We also saw a neat Desert Iguana (Dipsosaurus Dorsalis), and I almost even hit one with my car as it ran across the road.  The desert iguana is a really light colored lizard, fairly large, and mostly a herbivore.

I stopped to do some bird watching (armed with my new book) at barker dam in Joshua Tree National Park.  It is usually a fairly large body of water in the middle of the desert which attracts a number of birds, bighorn sheep, and other wildlife.  It was sort of just a muddy puddle when we went.  Apparently it's been a really dry year.  Nonetheless there where a bunch of  white-throated swifts ( Aeronautes Saxatalis ), some sort of flycatcher ( maybe an ash-throated, but I have a hard time with these ) and some little brown birds about.  It was nice sitting under a rock in the shade trying to identify everything.  Soon a group of young adults/college students showed up.  The guys were shirtless and the girls where mostly naked.  I think they had wanted to swim in the water... although there was not nearly enough this time of year.  We left while they stood on the 'shore' looking forlornly at the muddy pool that was supposed to be a pond.

We found this cowboy hat in the road, with a tire track across the brim.  It works wonderfully for bird watching.

We made it to palm springs about an hour before my dads flight got in.  The time was well spent in the shower.

On monday we walked up Andreas Canyon in the Indian Canyons area.  This area is the ancestral home to the Agua Caliente Cahuilla indians, and today is mostly a reservation.  The land that was 'given' to the indians is in a checkerboard pattern, so they don't actually have a large contiguous area.  They just own alternating squares.  There's a picture below, where the brown squares are what was 'given' to them.  It's a really weird setup.  I would have been one pissed indian when they showed me this map.

Wut.

In any case, the Indian Canyons area lies in one of the squares and is home to a number of palm oasis.  These canyons look like odd green streaks in the desert from far away, and up close look like the sort of lush palm frond and babbling brook oasis you assume is made up by people who have only read about them.

Shortly after this photo my phone was doused by the babbling brook.  Sorry for the fuzzy/milky pictures that follow.

When not tended on city streets, some types of palm have a huge husk of dead fronds around their trunks. To the right of this picture are two palm trees, each with a trunk about 1 foot in diameter.  The dead frond husks make nearly a solid wall in places.  I tried to part them and see if there is an open space next to the trunk... unfortunately I would not fit.

The contrast between the desert on each side and the flowing water and greenery in the center was really neat.  There was a bunch of life in the canyons as well, including tree frogs, a long coachwhip snake, and some familiar lizards from Utah.

A very colorful Granite Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus Orcutti) photographed with a wet iPhone. 

The underside of a larger, grumpier Granite Spiny Lizard.  The males have really bright blue bellies and chins, which intensify during breading season.

A California tree frog I think.  Just hanging out on Athena's Finger.

The tree frogs blend in really well to both the rocks and trees.  This one wouldn't move.

A 'Red Coachwhip' or 'Red Racer'  ( Masticophis Flagellum Piceus ).  One of the longest snakes we've caught at  more than 4 feet but really skinny.  Coachwhips are really fast snakes that eat lizards, birds, and rodents.  They have really good eyesight for a snake.

Some Hiltonius species of millipede.  Thicker than a pencil, and quite long.  There was a group of 4 or 5.  Harmless but a bit weird.  These types of arthropods were some of the first creatures to colonize land as life moved out of the seas. 

There have also been a large number of hummingbirds around. I think that most of them are Anna's, Costa's or Black Chinned Hummingbirds.  Around the hotel we found four separate humming bird nests. This is... simply amazing.  You almost never find humming bird nests.  They are tiny and rare and frequently well hidden.

This nest is maybe 1-2 inches across, and is held together with spider webs.  I have no idea how a hummingbird harvests enough spider web to make a nest, but apparently they manage.  The nests sit between 1-2 meters off of the ground and holds a clutch of 1-2 eggs.

We spent a large amount of time trying to identify one bird today, and finally settled on a juvenile Costa's Hummingbird ( Calypte Costae ).   It spent the whole day sitting on a branch near one of the nests, and every once in a while its mother ( humming birds are for the most part all raised by single mothers ) would come and feed it.  This mouth to mouth feeding went surprisingly well given the unique physiology of the hummingbird.

Tomorrow we are off to the Sierras.  We will be making our way towards Bishop California, then on to San Francisco.  Hopefully the weather will be a bit colder.  There's a full moon coming up, and we are looking forward to camping under it in the mountains.

We washed my rope in the hotel tub.  It was a bit dirty.