Day 2 LAX - Joshua Tree

Today, the day started quite early. The night ended around 4 o'clock and with a lot of effort we left our hotel room at 6:15. Since we booked a hotel near the airport, there were hundreds of breakfast options in the area. We were lazy and took the first opportunity - IHOP. It didn't taste great, but it was interesting to see how crowded the restaurant was at this time. I won't show you photos of the food - 2 fried eggs (they were real) and 2 pancakes with artificial ingredients. Well, the food didn't kill us.

After that, we drove out of LA to take advantage of the early morning traffic. Even from the highway, you could see that LA really looks like what you see on TV. We will let two Germans show us LA on our last full day. But for now, we're heading into nature.

First stop was a Walmart Vision Store to pick up a few things and kill some time because the Premium Outlet on the way didn't open until around 10 o'clock. Back to this Walmart - wow, such a huge store with lots of stuff the world doesn't need! I can't say for sure if I was excited or disappointed - I still can't tell.

We set a time limit for the outlet (up to 2.5 hours) because we wanted to see as much of Joshua Tree National Park as possible. Time limits are great - around 12:30 we continued our drive, with some clothes and shoes. The area had already changed a lot. It was very dry and mountainous. We reached our motel in 29 Palms after about an hour. Here we checked in to unload our luggage, grab some ice for our newly purchased Styrofoam cooler, and eat a bit from this lunchbox. The outside temperature was around 40 degrees, so we also bought a lot of water. At 3 o'clock we drove into Joshua Tree Park. From here you can see the first real photos - lots of Joshua Trees, the Cholla Cactus Garden, Skulls Rock, and more, to watch the sunset from Keys View. In the Cholla Cactus Garden, sturdy shoes and long pants are highly recommended, as the flowers or new buds of the cacti quickly stick to clothing. Without clothing, it would be a very prickly situation. The sunset here is at 7:45 PM, and after that there was still about 30 minutes of beautiful light (blue hour), which we spent wisely in the car to drive tired to the hotel. It's a pity from a photographic point of view, but the highlights are yet to come. Suddenly it was pitch black and the drive back was very exhausting, as the streetlights were practically not illuminated. We reached the hotel around 9 o'clock, the food selection was already very limited here, but we knew that this wouldn't be a gourmet trip. I already selected the photos from the first day yesterday and now I'm writing the text for them well-rested. The air conditioning is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, but when you have the choice between suffocating and loud noises, you choose to live with the loud vacuum cleaner noise. My night ended at 5:30 AM, Uli's at 4:30 AM, at least!

Today we will continue on Route 66 towards the Grand Canyon. I will report on what we experience there.