Another great day in Joshua Tree National Park

Written Wednesday morning, April 6th.

Around 8:30am yesterday morning, I saw a park ranger walk by with some paperwork in his hand. I went out and flagged him down to ask about their "campground full" signs.

He says "I've only found three vacant this morning."

And I replied "Yeah, but yesterday when we arrived just before noon the sign said campground full, yet we found  at least a dozen empty sites".

He says "Well, out of 125 sites, that's only 10% vacancy. I say that's full."

Huh? Okay. What else can you say about that? I turned to walk away.

He followed me and went on to say that it's very labor intensive to go around checking sites and that due to budget cutbacks they just don't have the manpower. I also asked about the outdated tags on the posts and he says it's the campers responsibility to remove them. Okay, but when they don't, I told him it was their responsibility. Oh, but then there's those budget cutbacks. Too much labor, don't ya know.

Yikes...maybe if they ran it more efficiently there wouldn't need to be budget cutbacks. Maybe put in a camp host site whose job it is to keep track of the vacancies and outdated tags. As it is, if it's full every night they've got over $50,000 a month coming in. Makes you wonder how they spend it.

The Beetle on the "4 wheel drive" road.

We went for a drive down the Geology Trail, a dirt road with a sign that said "4 wheel drive only". It just looked like a normal dirt road to me, so I figured the Beetle was up for the challenge.

Nothing to it.

We only went about half way, so perhaps the road got worse further on, but any vehicle could have easily done the section that we saw. Not the greatest scenery though, so we turned around.

Lots of desert plants in bloom.

Then, we did the 1.3 mile (2 km) Barker Dam Trail. Some nice scenery in the rocks.

Heading towards the dam.

More desert flowers. Such brilliant colors!

Neat scenery.

Group selfie in the desert.

Climbing on the rocks.

The dam.

Back in the 1940's someone thought they would try and do some cattle ranching here and they built this dam to keep water available for the cattle year round. They learned that you can't raise cattle in the desert! During rainy season, the water level is full, but then it just evaporates through the dry season.

More beautiful flowers.

Hummingbird posing on a branch.

Then, we did the paved road to Key's View. And it was a great view, but I neglected to get a photo because I was busy with a very weak cell signal posting yesterday's blog for you all. There is no cell service in most of the park, but with a clear view down into the valley, I picked up a useable signal.

Back at Sherman for a late lunch, and then we did the short hike to Skull Rock.

Skull Rock.

Tony and Ruth.

Yoga on the rocks?

Ruth, sitting on the big rocks.

This morning, we're moving on to the Cottonwood Campground at the south entrance to the park. There's water and a dump station available, and hopefully a cell signal so that we can get back online. There's also a 4 mile (6.5 km) hike that we'd like to do.

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