Part 1 of 5 Joshua Tree Natl Park 2-29-12

This morning we left Quartzsite for a short trip to see CA. Heading to San Diego. First stop is General George S Patton, Jr Museum in the desert. It was a small museum but Phil was interested in the General.
This was the Desert Training Center for CA and AZ Maneuver arena. It was established by Patton to train American combat troops for battle in North Africa during WWII. Camp opened in 1942 and covered 18,000 sq miles. Being the largest military training ground to ever exist. They say you can still see tank tracks in the desert.

Had a lot of tanks from different wars.
After leaving the museum we continued on and started seeing the mountains of CA. The ones in the far distant had snow on them. YEA Phil was real excited. This is Mt. San Gorgenio 11485'.
Then this sign jumped out at us. We are not ones to by pass a National Park especially one of Joshua Trees. It was pretty much like the desert we have been living in the last few months and we were wondering when the Joshua trees would start (we really like the look of the Joshua tree.) These parks are free when you are 65 (another benefit).
But like I said looks pretty much like a desert. This is the Colorado Desert. And we just kept climbing.
Still more desert. Look at how smooth the mountains are.

Hope you will be able to follow us on this outing, it is really hard to blog backwards but I don't know how else to do this.

By the way we never made it to San Diego, we spent the night in Palm Springs, CA which was OK. It is a town full of lights and movie star named streets with car dealer ships in the middle of a strip mall looking like a fancy shop.

Please enjoy and read on.