March 30 2008

Dan wrote:

March 30 2008

We celebrated Ty's birthday early so he could have one last fling at the "glory park".

We are in Yucca Valley just outside of Joshua Tree National Park. The ward we found on the lds website meets in the afternoon. It seemed like it took all of the time we had to get ready. The ward was really nice.

We were able to do some nice exploring in Joshua Tree National Park.

Yesterday was a lot of fun but felt totally out of control. We started the day with the idea that we would see how fast we could get ready, go straight to Joshua Tree and then get in half a day of work and school. The first part went according to plan we saw how fast we could get ready, not nearly fast enough.

A few days earlier Dallin somehow popped the front tire on his bike. This is a moderate to full sized tragedy for someone his age. We bought him a tire and tube at WalMart earlier but found that there was a 26” tube in a 16” box. Taking the trailer anywhere in the San Diego area is its own little drama because of the traffic but we found out decided to venture a Sports Authority to track down a tube. The sporting good store happened to be by a Barnes and Noble bookstore. So in the end the $4 tube wound up costing closer to $200 but we have some great reading material now. I laugh because I have heard that when a person goes into the wilderness their first concern is starvation. I think our aggressive buy at Barnes and Noble was related to the thought of possibly being in a place with out cell signal and hence internet access, a kind of stock piling against mental starvation. The other vector in the purchase was that Ty and Dallin really have out grown the little kid book library we have. They still like to listen to the stories but they are ready for older books. We bought a couple from the Star Wars series that were written above their reading level but that didn’t deter them. They both used the rest of the car ride to get as much reading done from the books as they could. They both got a charge out of reading a book that was labeled for an 11 or 12 year old.

We found out that we had not done enough research about Joshua Tree. I had imagined the park to be much smaller than it is. We wound up coming in on the south entrance which didn’t leave us near anywhere to go to church and also found that all of the campgrounds were full. We were able to take a nice quarter mile loop trail that had a lot of information about desert plants. I was particularly impressed with the ocotillo which will shed its leaves up to five times a year in response to drought conditions. When the rain comes the ocotillo can regrow its leaves within a few days. There is a place in the park called the cholla garden which has an amazing number of cholla cacti. I wasn’t able to get a picture because I was driving and the parking lot was jammed full but I will get a picture if I get back to it. We were curious to know why the bottom parts of the cholla were brown that is something else we will need to look up. I was surprised not to see more obvious places to rock climb. The ranger told us that Hidden Valley is the most popular spot so we will head over there Monday.

We drove through the park to Twentynine Palms and then over to Yucca Valley because there is a Wal-Mart in Yucca Valley. Wal-Marts generally have free overnight parking for RV’s. It was late by the time we pulled in and were happy to see several RV’s already there making us feel more comfortable about the idea that parking there was OK. There was one RV that even had lawn chairs set out in front of their rig. Just as we were getting the kids out to get into bed Lexie noticed we were parked right under a “NO OVERNIGHT RV PARKING” sign. Our neighbor assured us that they just put the sign up for “people who were no ‘darn’ good” and that he had been here two weeks without any trouble. After some brief discussion we decided that it wasn’t a good example to our kids to disobey a sign like that so we went for plan B which was to see if there was a similar sign at the church parking lot. Much to our surprise there was much more than a sign there was a fence around the entire parking lot. The parking lot was also landscaped such that it would be a real trick to get an RV into it. We were starting to get the feeling that RV parking was its own little issue in Yucca Valley. Knowing that the plan of taking the trailer to church probably wouldn’t work out very well we went to plan C and found the first RV park we could. I have yet to find much redeeming about this RV park other than it is a place to park and has a couple of pretty Joshua trees.

Back to Wednesday the trip to the San Diego Wild Animal park was fabulous. I couldn’t decide if I like the Wild Animal park or the Zoo better but I definitely know I like both. The highlight of the trip for me is that the Wild Animal park displays California Condors. I had become excited to see one since reading about them in the LA zoo. I was also impressed with all of the babies. Spring really is a great time to go to a wild animal breeding facility. The two female lions had 7 cubs between them. The cubs were a few months old but still absolutely darling. There was also a baby gibbon that was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. I think David’s highlight was the butterfly house. I would smile and point all over. A very large butterfly landed on Natalyn which really excited here. When we looked at the picture it became more obvious to us why the butterfly had chosen Natalyn for a landing pad. Not only did she possess her stunning beauty but also the better part of her lunch all over her shirt.

The baby gibbon was adorable

Seeing a California Condor was the highlight of the trip for me.

Davey had fun on the train tour

We were able to get some great views of several animals