Camping in Joshua Tree

The gang at Joshua Tree: Brian, Allie, Alba, Lucy, and Tom (not pictured: Mitch, Josie, Me)

In my absence of blogging for a few weeks I forgot to mention the great weekend we had camping at Joshua Tree with Tom, Allie, Brian and Alba. Despite being camped with 500 other people from Los Angeles, it was still beautiful in the desert and we had a great time.

Tom brought his telescope and although I only looked at a few of the billions of stars (plus of course, Saturn), Mitch had a great time looking at bright spot after bright spot.

Despite the long drought, lots of annuals were blooming and a few of the cactii were starting to bloom. We saw lots of lizards, which the girls loved. Josie, especially, wanted to spend the entire weekend looking for lizards and spent four days saying either, "Lizards running." Or, "more lizards."

Most of us climbed a few pitches of easy 5.6/5.7. I nearly died on one mildly challenging, slightly awkward, slightly overhanging corner of 5.6. I managed to get bloody hands from J. Tree manzanite and remind myself that I haven't climbed a darn thing since 2004... But it was still fun. We're trying to plan a few more camping trips for the summer season.