Joshua Tree National Park

Getting out of the city and into nature was our motto today. When I planned this trip and looked at how to get there and what routes we had, I came across a cool bar in Topock. The pictures on the internet convinced me, so it's on the list. 😊 Forget about a day trip by car to Flagstaff, we're staying overnight in Needles. 🤷🏼‍♀️ But just sitting in the car and driving here would be too boring. That's why we first went to Joshua Tree National Park from LA. As the name suggests, this park is known for its Joshua Trees. A few funny-looking trees that manage to survive in the rocky desert at high temperatures. The Keys Ranch, also on my list (an old abandoned ranch here in the NP), can only be visited again in September due to the high temperatures. 🙄 You can only go there with rangers, and yes, I checked of course, but everything is already fenced and closed well before the ranch. 😅 Well, but there's also the Barker Dam here. A beautiful, small reservoir (at least according to the pictures on the Internet) in the middle of the desert and reachable by a short hike. So, we parked the car and off we went. The path meandered through cool rock formations and Joshua Trees. And the amount of water the dam still had - ironic 😆 Nevertheless, we found it really beautiful. It was damn hot, but beautiful. 😊

Back at the car, complete failure of navigation, maps, and everything else. Okay, it's accepted that you don't have reception in the national park, but reception in general in the land of unlimited possibilities is really bad. Luckily, I had photographed our route planner the night before. Who knows where we would have ended up. Simply turning back would have been a detour of at least 2.5 hours. 😅 Thank goodness Jörg can read maps and is a much better coordinator than I would be. 😅

On the way out of the park, the landscape changed from Joshua Tree "forests" (Jörg's exact words: Where do you see forests here? There are just a lot of individual, strange trees. Yvonne: Many individual trees ➡️ forest. Even if they are meters apart. 🤷🏼‍♀️😆) to rocky desert. Right off the road, we could also see Skull Rock. A large rock that resembles a skull depending on the angle. And ☝🏼 a coyote crossed our path. We really saw one in the wild. 😍
There might be rattlesnakes here too, but I only saw one squashed on the road in front of me, which honestly was more than enough for me. 😅
Our further way leads us through Wonder Valley. It felt like the end of the world, and we weren't that far off. Suddenly, there was a huge sign reminiscent of the Hollywood Sign: END OF THE WORLD. We had to take a closer look, and yes, it really was the end of the world. Hot, a bunch of junk, and no soul in sight. I could think of 1 or 2 people I would like to send here. 😇

Arriving in Needles, we unloaded the essentials from the car, inspected the room, and went straight to Topock 66 Colorado River in Topock. 😊 The bar we came here for. 🤷🏼‍♀️
A cool bar belonging to the marina here, with a pool, live music, simply a place to have fun on Route 66. If you pass by here, Topock 66 is definitely worth a stop.