LA, Channel Islands, Joshua Tree, Death Valley - aka warm places with sunshine

As you may discern from the title, falling temps are driving us to the south. After heading south from the Monterey and Pinnacles areas, we were happy to have an excuse to camp near LA and the Channel Islands. It was the best kind of excuse, since we took the opportunity to enjoy the company of another niece, Sarah, and her fiancé Will. In our first encounter they took us on a favorite hike that offered magnificent skyline views of LA. After that appetizer, they led us to LA's "Chinatown" for some excellent dumplings, among other super-authentic dishes. Next evening Sarah and Will cooked dinner for us, which was a culinary pleasure and allowed for some great relaxed conversation with them and a couple of their roommates. It was a short visit, but a good one. While they were off schooling and working, we explored Channel Islands NP (well, Santa Cruz Island).

It was great fun linking up with Sarah and Will!

Getting to Santa Cruz island is part of the adventure and we used the park concessionaire for the hour-ish boat ride. Heavy emphasis on the -ish, because we saw a pod of dolphins and the boat lingered so that we could watch them play (aka hunt for fish and surf in the boat's wake). Once on the island, we struck out for the path less travelled and headed for the mountain range that bisects the eastern part of the island (it's a big island). We had the trails essentially to ourselves until we headed back toward the ocean and the harbor area. We saw a bunch of Island fox (they only live on Santa Cruz Island), which was cool, as they were recently endangered. We saw more dolphins on the way back (yay!). While we had a super positive experience visiting Sarah and Will, and loved tagging another National Park, we easily determined that LA's traffic and sheer size makes it a bit overwhelming and unlikely to become a landing place for a more permanent home/job location.

A Joshua Tree, so named by early Mormon settlers

We departed LA bound for Joshua Tree, another of the iconic national parks. For some campgrounds, timing is everything and we lucked into a prime spot in the Jumbo Rocks Campground in the middle of the park. We had just about decided the campground was slammed and we'd have to move on to plan B (you always have a plan B when arriving at a first-come-first-served campground), but a very kind couple waved us down and said they were leaving their just-long-enough campsite. It's not easy "parallel parking" the YOFOHome but we were super grateful to get that site. Hopefully, they got a karma boost of some type for their much appreciated kindness.

Desert sunset on the YOFOhome at Joshua Tree NP

We had fun checking out the trails near Cottonwood where we explored a fun hike across the desert into an oasis, and scrambled around and over some rock piles. Lots of 4WD roads to explore - some of which we checked out by mountain bike. This park made us regret not bringing our climbing shoes on our YOFO. It's been a few years since we've bouldered and top-roped, but Joshua Tree will inspire you to learn how to climb. Oh, did we mention the stars? Amazing! This is a "dark sky" park where the astronomical delights are one of the major attractions. Joshua turned out to have lots of fun places to explore and we certainly could have spent longer playing there.

Pic does not do justice to the colorful shades of rock in the background here at Artists Pallette lookout.

On to Death Valley - hottest, driest, lowest...and biggest of any other park south of Alaska. We hiked deep canyons and saw cool rock formations. We got the tri-bikes down for the first time since Monterey and proceeded to crush our own souls. In a somewhat rookie move, we figured that the campground is at minus 180 feet of elevation, and the Badwater Basin (about 17 miles away) is at minus 282...easy peasy! All we have to do is coast down there and then we'd have an easy, gradual climb back. Yeah, not so much. In Death Valley, the alluvial fans from canyons cause mounds of rock that the road goes up and over! It may not have measured up to the climbing we did on our bikes in Canada, but it was certainly a surprise to us. So how did we react? We "embraced the suck" and lived our motto of "do all the things" by detouring through the Artists Drive area. This "detour" leaves the valley to climb into the scenic and colorful foothills of the Amargosa Mountains that border the valley to east. In retrospect it was a great ride - super happy we did it - but dang did we suffer, especially since we did such a poor job of managing our own expectations! Hills and more hills was not the picture in our heads when we set out on an easy 40 mile bike through Death Valley!

PBnJ with a view of a Canyon in Death Valley.

From a mountain top in Joshua Tree, we found a cell signal to make reservations at Zion NP and Grand Canyon, so we're going to tag those parks (likely not spending near enough time there too) before heading back to Las Vegas to reset and catch a flight to join the kids for Thanksgiving!

Artists Pallette. Side note - of all the crazy tan lines, the back of knee not tan look is our favorite!