Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree

 We didn’t want to leave the serenity of Mojave Narrows with its chirping and chattering waterfowl and the rustling of the cottonwood leaves. But our next adventure was waiting!

 

We chose to stay at an RV park in Twentynine Palms because of its proximity to Joshua Tree National Park. We are geeky about enjoying nature and learning about the different deserts and peoples and geology in an area. We planned on the trail at Barker Dam, which was built by cattle ranchers at the turn of the century.

 

The trail was a lovely and flat loop, about 1.5 miles long. We saw lots of the namesake Joshua Trees and even some petroglyphs on the trail. 

The dam only sees water in seasons with rain and winter wasn’t the rainy season, so we climbed it safely.

 

Twentynine Palms has a wonderful national park office and there was a great farmers market that weekend. Picking up fresh vegetables and homemade bread and tamales is such a treat!

Mojave Narrows Regional Park

 Sometimes you make plans, you pivot on those plans, and you just get lucky!  Dan and I skedaddled out of the free campground because we felt too claustrophobic with all the rigs packed in together. We found a regional park near Victorville, CA, in San Bernadino County, called Mojave Narrows.  The reviews we read sounded decent, and we reserved a spot where our back patio opened to Horseshoe Lake and crossed our fingers.

 

We were pleasantly surprised to roll in to a lush nature park with tons of cottonwoods and willows. We relaxed to the calls of so many different bird species, the website says there are over 1500 species of watchable wildlife!

 

We took a couple bike rides around the acreage and watched the train delivering who knows what to people who knows where.  

We had terrific weather and practically no neighbors except the ones who took flight just to settle back on a log in the water on one of the two lakes.

 

That’s the kind of experience that centers me - the calm of the cattails and the chatter of the birds.

Soledad Canyon - Thousand Trails

After we said goodbye to the ocean again, we headed into the California hills to stay at our second Thousand Trails campground, Soledad Canyon. Thousand Trails is a campground membership that allows free 21 day stays for its members, and the membership came free for a year with our RV purchase. Why not try a few campgrounds?

 

This campground had real promise. It is huge and has 2 pools and 2 clubhouses with laundry and pickleball courts and lots of trees and a creekbed and coyotes who howled to the dogs who howled back.

 

The RV spots were not great.  Although the map showed something like 300 spots, so many of them were out of order with no power at the towers.  We found some incredible sandy spots by the creek but when we got out to walk them, we picked up the most serious destructive goatheads I’ve ever seen.  We almost got Josey stuck in some deep sand at one spot - that was excitement I didn’t need!

 

The campground has a whole section that is being renovated where we walked around until we were asked to leave by the workers, and it will be really quite nice once complete.  Our hope is that the rest of the campground is under the same renovation plan and that’s why so many of the best sites were uninhabitable.

 

We finally found a decent spot (with power!) and settled in. The sunsets were amazing.  The pickleball was a lot of fun (Dan won, no surprise).