Yesterday I arrived in Joshua Tree National Park, the southern section at Cottonwood Campground. It’s a huge park, and ironically I’ve yet to see a Joshua tree because they don’t grow in this part of the park, which is entirely a different desert than the northern and western portions 50 miles away. I’m in the Colorado Desert, an area below 3,000 feet that tends to be drier and hotter, whereas the Mojave Desert is higher, and thus cooler, and gets more rainfall, which is what the Joshua trees must like.
There are more than half-a-dozen campgrounds in the park, all with varying levels of amenities, but none have electricity or showers. Fortunately the sun is pumping out more solar energy than I’m using and I’ve got 30 gallons of water in the tanks. Yesterday before I left Anza-Borrego I took a hot shower in the sun while boondocking, not a soul in sight unless someone was peepin’ with binocs from a mountain, in which case they were blinded by a white cheek reflection.
Not long ago in a post I mentioned that I thought I’d read that White Sand Dunes National Park, which I visited in New Mexico, had 700 foot sand dunes, only to realize they were more like 70 feet. Tonight I was reading about Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, which has 750 foot dunes, so I’d confused the two. Who knew there was so much sand in this country, mountains of the stuff, and so many dune themed parks?
Today I ran out of socks. I brought a lot of clothes with me, since it’s easier just to toss the dirties in a bag in the back of the truck bed and deal with them when I get home or come across a laundromat—some parks have them. I did a load of laundry at Big Bend National Park three weeks ago and had a little leftover detergent, so today I washed 7 pairs of socks and a couple of hand towels and boxers in my tiny kitchen sink. I heated some water up, let them soak, agitated them with my hands, twisted them and wrang them out, then rinsed them twice and hung them outside to dry in the sun. The warm water felt good to splash my hands around in and it was unexpectedly satisfying to do this task by hand, which not that long ago was the way it was done, except I didn’t have a washboard. It wasn’t until about 1940 that roughly half of American households had early versions of washing machines, and it felt like a step back in time to do it by hand, though if I had to do it by hand every time, I’d probably stop doing laundry. Also, somehow I lost one sock in the process. I looked everywhere.
Today on a hike I saw a little black bird perched on a branch near me. He looked like a small cardinal, a little crest on his head, except he was midnight black and when he flew he had white under his wingtips, a well-appointed and a regal little fellow who declined to pose for a picture, flitting away as I went for my camera. The bird was a phainopepla, which is way harder to remember than black cardinal, so I’m gonna remember him how I want.
I’m planning on staying in the southern half of the park until Saturday and then moving to the northern section for another week after that.
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