The Park is enormous...stretching for miles and miles of desolate, rock and shrub strewn miles. We opted to spend Day 2 hiking into the Fortynine Palms Oasis and then driving the park road through to the Cholla Cactus Garden. Both destinations were amazing!
Fortynine Palms Oasis is on the north side of the Park and require a moderately strenuous hike (up and over a ridge) to descend to a hidden oasis. It is really a thrill to hike through dry, rocky, and brush filled terrain and then suddenly a beacon of palm trees is spotted in the distance. This oasis still has a bit of standing water and is used heavily by wildlife in the Park.
The ride across the park took us up and over the Pinto Mountains and then long open vistas to the east and the Coxcomb Mountains. A whole lot of nothing...I can not understand how the early ranchers and miners thought this was a good place for much of anything. But one stretch of the road is perfect of Cholla (choy-ya) Cactus. The perfect soil, altitude, rain (less than 4 inches a year) and drainage that at least a cholla could love. Don't even think of touching this plant -- even the brochure says: Be on guard that you do not walk too close to the cholla cactus. At the slightest touch, the spines will penetrate your flesh and are extracted only with difficulty and pain. Not too many folks wandered off this trail!
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| Up, over, down, and around....miles to see those palm trees? |
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| Busy bees in the desert |
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| The trees are such a contrast to the rocky, dry, hot, steep mountain terrain |
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| A Cholla Cactus Garden with view across the Pinto Basin |
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| Stay Away! |
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| Dead cholla trunk -- peak through to more chollas |
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