What a night, thunderstorms, with lots of lightning, that kept us awake on and off, but the sun was shining in the morning. Clouds started to roll in again during breakfast, but as we were here we drove down to the Joshua Tree NP. A strange place, the Joshua Tree is not really a tree or a cactus, it's a yucca, and given its name by the early Mormon settlers, who likened the tree to Joshua welcoming them with open arms!
It was a peculiar irony that whilst we had spent the last four weeks pretty much with wonderful weather, we were at the southern-most point of our trip, in the desert, and it was raining, not just raining, but thunder and lightning.
The rain held off for while so we were able to drive around and enjoy the scenery. The Park is one of the last refuges for the desert tortoise and there were warning signs for tarantulas, so we kept a close eye for both, but no luck. Thunderstorms rolled in again, lightning and torrential rain swept across the park, so we couldn't really walk any of the trails. It stopped long enough for us to enjoy our lunch and we drove on for a while longer, but the rain came on again so we headed back to the Hide-a-way. It is quite a park, above 4,000 feet, the highest lookout is at just over 5,000 feet. The lookout, Keys View faces Palm Springs and the dreaded San Andreas Fault.
Some blog catching up, a beer, and it was dinner time. We had bought a 'cowboy' steak, it must have been three inches thick, and we got the butcher to slice in in half. Barbecued, it was delicious, and washed down with an old vine Zinfandel, fabulous. We watched a movie then bed.
