Although we are in the desert, the nights are really cold. Last night the temperature got down into the low 50’s. Yet when the sun came up and we woke up, the temp climbed quickly so that by 8am it was in the upper 70’s. I thought I would like living in a desert kind of climate but now I’m not so sure. But I can tell you we did sleep great. Maybe because of the quickly rising heat or maybe just because, we skipped breakfast and just walked around camp. There were a lot of people camped here. But most of them were on the other end of the campground so we had a pretty quiet night before. We still had to register but when we went to the office, it didn’t open until 9:00. They had a list on the door of who was in what sites and much to my surprise and dismay, our names were not listed for our site. It made me a little apprehensive about check in but I had a confirmed reservation so not much they could do about it.
When the office did open, we took care of the mixup (their’s) and I got my national park passport stamp. I also got Joshua Tree stickers and a couple of post cards and magnets. Magnets seem to be my new obsession. After that was taken care of we went back to our campsite. It was hot. We decided to try putting up/down the awning since we had never done it before and we needed some shade. I will explain why in a minute. Not knowing at all what we were doing and have only the installation instructions in my bag of camper tricks, we turned to everyones favorite helper, YOUTUBE. We found a very easy video and followed along step by step pausing as needed. It turned out to be sooooo easy we will always use it now. Now we had shade.
Now remember we are at Joshua Tree National Park so you would assume that there were trees, Joshua Trees. Well we did have them. Tons of them. But Joshua trees look like a cross between a cactus and a very short palm tree and the circle of shade is about 2 feet if that. So needless to say even though we had trees, we had almost no shade. Well we now did with the canopy. And the temperature was rising to now be in the upper 80’s. Most of the rest of the day until close to sunset we sat under the canopy and read or in Keith’s case slept. It was really nice to completely shut down for the first time since Kansas really. We took Joey on short walks but we found out she really isn’t a desert dog. We had a late lunch of ham sandwiches with chips and carrots (hey its a vegetable right). and just was lazy. I did clean the camper later in the day but other than that did nothing. Even supper was just eggs and mac and cheese (don’t judge). We were able to have another fire that night and stayed out as long as we could, until Joey drove us nuts and it got too cold. 90+ to 65 in under an hour. Tommorrow is another travel day so off to bed to snuggle under the covers. Next stop LA and the end of the road!!
Desert Day 20