Staying Alive In Joshua Tree National Park

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Signs pleading “Do Not Die Today” served as a grim introduction to Joshua Tree National Park, but, like most visitors, we made a mental note to avoid death and joyfully headed into the desert where succulents beseeching God and the un-huggable “Teddybear” cactus both live.

Joshua Tree National Park’s star attractions – named by 19^th-century Mormon settlers who decided they looked like the Old Testament’s tribal leader, Joshua, with his arms raised toward his Heavenly Father – aren’t trees. They’re a type of Agave, the genus responsible for tequila, which, when imbibed in quantity, can also make you see God.

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Joshua Tree National Park contains the greatest number of its namesake specimens in the world, and their importance to the ecosystem has earned them well-deserved protection by law. Visitors are allowed to walk the sandy trails between the plants, and a quick touch of their spiky appendages is all the incentive needed to leave them alone.

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Having driven in via the West Entrance (located on the north side of the park), we had at least two hours of good scenic driving, with plenty of stops to enjoy each elevations’ unique topography.

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Among the highlights were an unexpected view of Palm Springs (our next destination) from the 5,185-foot-high Keys View overlooking the Coachella Valley, and the shocking realization we were also looking at the infamous 750-mile-long San Andreas Fault Line, an unsettling uprising where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates collide, with dramatic results (earthquakes).

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Also visible from Keys View are the Salton Sea, which we’d visit the next day, Signal Mountains on the U.S./Mexico border, and Mount San Jacinto, rising 10,831 feet above the valley.

Returning to a lower elevation, we paid a visit to Hall of Horrors and its freaky rock mounds before taking a detour south to Cholla Cactus Garden.

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As much as we enjoyed the delightfully wonky Joshua Trees, we were even more taken by the ten-acre grove of Teddybear Cholla cactuses that only grow between 600 and 3,300 feet above sea level. Their name is misleading. This isn’t the sort of thing you’d want your toddler to snuggle down with for a good night’s sleep.

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Adorable as they are, they also have a super-power that allows their needles to readily attach to anything that brushes by them, and not in a good way. Simon was tempted to give them a poke, but, somehow, he resisted. We have special tweezers in the car for just such emergencies (tick tweezers for dogs, really, but they’ll pull needles, too), but thankfully we didn’t have to use them.

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We returned to Joshua Tree after our visit to Palm Springs, but in the interest of efficiency I’m going to include that visit here and cover Palm Springs separately. We ate a lot of real food while experiencing the tucked-away haven for celebrities, wealthy second-homers, and the hard-working people who keep the whole place going, and that deserves its own blog.

On our way through California from Nevada we took the northern route to Joshua Tree, traveling along roads that were not only desolate, they also featured tiny towns that were mostly abandoned, and a single gas station/café that we thought would have a restroom for bursting bladders, but didn’t.

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Not wanting a repeat of that crushing emptiness and full bladders, and also wanting to see the southern side of Joshua Tree National Park, we opted for Highway 10 east, blissfully unaware of what the northern leg of the journey along connecting Highway 177 would bring.

We only needed a moderate detour into the park for Cottonwood Spring, a literal oasis in the desert. Instead of the shimmering mirage that promised a palm tree-line water hole to movie and cartoon characters who didn’t pay attention to the Do Not Die Today signs and pack enough water and their own shade, this oasis did exist, and provided cooling cover, though all of its water had dried up.

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With so much dense foliage around, and this being a desert, we did wonder what might be lurking in the underbrush or clinging to tree branches, but we set that aside and had a nice little wander, admiring the dry wash that ran through it while also bearing all the Flash Flood Danger signs in mind.

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Fascinating signs along the oasis’ pathway described how the Cahuilla Indians who lived here used desert plants for food and medicine, and evidence of their daily lives remains, through mortar holes ground into granite rocks. The holes are so deep we could put our hands into them, nearly up to the elbow. Imagine how long it would take to form a hole that deep when grinding seeds for food.

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On the return journey back to Laughlin, we had the same mind-numbing emptiness along Highway 177 as we’d had on Highway 62 on our way out, with two major exceptions. Out in the middle of absolutely nowhere were two roadside curiosities. Hundreds of shoes, most tied together in pairs by their laces, some just singles, and some nothing more than the sole of a shoe, were thrown over a metal structure and a fence, or strewn across the ground as if blown down by the wind or left by a careless owner.

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Other travelers had stopped, too, and we all wondered what it could mean. The trash and broken glass scattered around the place suggested a festival of some sort had taken place, but signs and signed objects indicated grief. Many shoes were signed with, presumably, their owner’s name, but other objects included comments such as “Rest easy,” or “R.I.P., Forever in our hearts” or the grief-ridden, “I love you, my boy, my son.”

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It began to dawn on us that these could be memorials to young people who had passed during their school years, or shortly after, and the shoes were a way to show respect for their memory.

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There were no schools nearby, and no town, nor even any buildings. Was the road a hazard? Did local teens dare each other to take on the desert the way only those who feel they have lots of time and are somewhat invincible could do? What happened here?

When we returned to our dear Fati we looked it up, and it turns out these shoe memorials are mainly just due to people passing by who throw their footwear over the metal “tree” or fence, presumably to combat the utter boredom of driving along that vacuous road. No one perished along the highway, though some deaths were remembered there.

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We could see how people might die in Mojave, however, if they’re ill-informed or careless. At the same time, the desert held a quiet beauty for us; a beauty that was subtle and odd and blistering. We left thankful that we did not die that day in that fierce and wonderful place.