Twentynine Palms, California, United States
First off, we had breakfast, which would not normally be all that notable an event, but today we went to the Jelly Donut (housed in an ancient gas station), which, according to Yelp, is known for donuts and Vietnamese food. That struck us as rather unlikely, but no! Yelp is right! They serve donuts (HUGE donuts--two is more than enough!), Vietnamese food, Mexican food, Chinese food, and who knows what all else. Open until 10 or 11, when the cook/owner, who served us our donuts, feels like closing. Stick with us. See the world. Find amazing new things.
After breakfast, we toddled off to the Oasis Visitor Center for Joshua Tree National Park. You may remember from my blog post about our visit to Mojave National Preserve last year (link here) that Mojave has more Joshua trees than Joshua Tree National Park. The ranger here at Joshua Tree readily acknowledged that--Mojave is the largest concentration of Joshua trees anywhere in the world.
This park, however, is quite fascinating. It has two completely different types of desert in it: the Mojave and the Sonoran.
(The section of the park here which is Sonoran desert is called the Colorado Desert.) They are at different enough elevations to have completely different vegetation. We started at the northern end of the park and drove south to the far end, and it was super interesting to watch the terrain change.
Most of my observations are on the photos, of which I took a few more than 250, but only posted 55.
Tomorrow, we're going to tour the northern part of the park, which is the more developed bit, and then go to the drive-in movie. We decided against a late night tonight, since we had such an exhausting day yesterday. We don't have to be anywhere Monday (staying here until Tuesday morning), so we can stay out as late as we like tomorrow.
Tonight we're going for Thai food at the recommendation of the young woman in the Twentynine Palms visitor center. We could smell the food when we walked out the door (restaurant is right across the street). Sold!
2025-05-22