40+ years in California, but I had never visited Joshua Tree… until now.
My camping buddy Nancy and I get to Yosemite a few times every year, and have been visiting Pinnacles in springtime the last few years. We decided to mix things up a bit — so many great places out there, so many of them in California. Joshua Tree seemed like a good starting point.
We planned this trip in November. Our mid-April trips to Pinnacles had been warm-to-hot, so with Joshua Tree being a few hundred miles south it made sense to go at the end of March. The state was in the depths of a drought and the ongoing La Nina did not offer much hope of improvement, but if there were going to be flowers, this would be the time.
What a difference three months can make.
Two days before our departure, the campground sent a severe weather alert warning that our reservations might need to be cancelled. We were glued to the forecasts — the campground was less than 30 miles from the major southern California blizzards in early March, and the whole state was getting rain day after day after day. Snow was forecast at the campground on the morning of our arrival, though it was “not expected to accumulate.” w.t.a.f. After a slightly late start due to power outages and downed trees in my area, we faced rain and strong headwinds for almost the entirety of the 500 mile drive. With only about an hour of daylight left to set up camp, howling winds made it hard to keep the tents in place until we could stake them down. That scritchy noise in the middle of the night wasn’t critters foraging outside the tent — it was the sound of frost forming on the rain-fly. (OTOH, Great Horned Owls duetted as we drifted off to sleep.)
The phrase “it seemed like a good idea at the time” came up more than once.
If Thursday morning dawned cold, it also dawned clear… and beautiful. With a bit of coffee and oatmeal to warm us, we watched the sun rise over the hills and started planning our exploration. According to the trail map in our campground, there were a lot of options throughout the park, but the area around Cottonwood Springs was best for birds and flowers… literally the opposite end of the park from us. A long drive, but through the heart of the park with plenty of potential stops.
The campers next door, who’d been coming to the park for years, mentioned the area around Jumbo Rock Campground/Skull Rock as a good place to walk among the park’s amazing rock formations. The timing seemed like it would work out to stop there for lunch.
We made a few stops for birds we heard along the way. (Nothing like spending some time to find a thrasher, only to finally realize you’re listening to a mockingbird.)
We needed to stretch our legs, but the center of the park was surprisingly crowded for mid-day Thursday. Bypassing some of the better known stops, we took a walk around the Cap Rock Nature Trail. This short walk took us though some of the rock formations the park is known for, along with a nice assortment of plant life.
Finally a bird photo!
Oh, wait — here’s one more:
Onward to Skull Rock and lunch. Except … damn, was it people-y there. We should have guessed that a place called “Skull Rock” would attract lots of families with kids and other folks out for a photo-op. We opted for a trail in the opposite direction, but then I realized I was getting a bit crashy (blood sugar) so after few minutes’ break, we got back on the road. It was still 20 or so miles to Cottonwood, and the clock was ticking on our day — there were birds and flowers to be seen!
Or not.
At the Cottonwood visitor center, we found out that this should be primetime for flowers, especially with all the rain, but because it had been so cold and windy the season was off to a slow start. No flowers = not so many birds. The staff told us that people coming from the south had reported more flowers outside the park on Box Canyon Road. (must be something about that name...)
We kept up the search for a lunch spot and came upon a lovely dry wash with our long-sought flowers and birds! Flocks of Lesser goldfinches were all around, chattering away. Verdin called each other, and a Black-throated Sparrow sang from the hillside above. Lots of birdsong, but not lots of bird pictures. Oh well.
We continued south to Box Canyon Road and there were some flowers but not a ton; we headed back. With our view of the traffic churning by on I-10, we opted to backtrack through the park instead, taking a slightly different route. This did allow us to visit the Joshua Tree distillery, which we’d noticed in the morning - it did not disappoint. (A bottle is destined for Yosemite this summer...)
Friday started with a hike right from the campground on the High View Loop trail. It was a great morning for hiking — cool enough to be comfy even during the long uphill portion, and just breezy enough for crystal clear vistas, though perhaps a bit too breezy to linger at the top. We were serenaded by the dulcet tones of Cactus Wrens for much of the walk. (For those of you who are unfamiliar, Cactus Wrens sound a bit like a car with a bad starter.) There were also more Black-throated Sparrows, along with more of the usual suspects like White-winged Doves, Bewick’s Wrens, White-crowned Sparrows, Lesser Goldfinches and House Finches.
This trip had been lovely, but it was definitely the least birdy travel Nancy and I have done. Fortunately, she did a bit of poking around on eBird before the trip and found one hotspot nearby — Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. We headed over there after lunch and.. damn, I wish we’d gone sooner.
Big Morongo is an oasis fed by springs and Big Morongo Creek, with stands of cottonwoods and willows providing habitat for birds and other critters. As we pulled into the lot, we saw a flash of brilliant flame red — a Vermillion Flycatcher. We were greeted by chattering goldfinches and flitting butterbutts. Yay! Birds!
The preserve has six well-marked trails, which include several boardwalks though lively marshes. We headed out toward the Mesquite Trail, but got distracted by a feeding station at the Nature Center & Pollinator Garden. After nearly an hour, we finally tore ourselves away.
The trails took us through some upland scrub and riparian marsh; a longer trail would have taken us into a chaparral canyon. Each turn in the trails brought a new and interesting vista — I can’t believe how many photos I took there. We covered what we could, then revised our departure plans so we could visit our new favorite place on the way out the next morning.
In the morning, we didn’t even make coffee — we just packed up and got on the road, stopping to grab breakfast at Frontier restaurant in Yucca Valley (highly recommended!) so we could get back to Big Morongo soon after opening. We headed out on the Desert Willow trail, which was just wonderful. The high point was the sheer numbers of Phainopeplas, always a favorite, but bird life of all kinds was abundant. We also spotted tracks of deer and a bobcat near one of the watering holes. The marshy areas hosted wrens and warblers (Yellow-rumped, Wilson’s, Lucy’s and Common Yellowthroats), sparrows, woodpeckers, doves… the woods were so alive!
Our trail loop took us back past the Nature Center, so of course we had to stop at the feeders again. While there, we heard discussion of a Long-eared Owl off one of the boardwalks. (We’d heard about the owl earlier and searched a little, but gave up so we could see more of the preserve.) A couple who were there at the feeders said they were going back for one more look before they headed out — would we like to join them? I was a little hesitant because normally one doesn’t reveal locations for sensitive species, but apparently the owl had been hanging out for months, fairly close to a trail, and didn’t seem to be bothered.
At last, alas, we had to leave our birdy oasis. We headed to the coast and spent the night with Nancy’s friend in Los Osos, a community on the south side of Morro Bay. We had a delicious dinner and a fun evening of conversation, then went for a walk at the edge of the bay on Sunday morning before we headed out. Not quite ready to call it quits, we also stopped in San Miguel and took a walk in a small nature preserve there.
It wasn’t the birdiest, and it had its hard moments — but damn, it was a great trip.
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(a few more photos of rocks and Big Morongo are in the comments.)