Star Party

We went to a star party in the Joshua Tree National Park to see the Perseid meteor shower. It was amazing. You can read about it here!


We had so much fun! A totally different kind of fun than star parties we had in college, but this isn't an appropriate place to talk about that :)

Joshua Tree National Park

These pictures are seriously out of order on the blog, which gives me crazy OCD, but nevertheless they need to be shared.

Joshua Tree is seriously one of my most favorite places on earth.

Desert Critters

S0.. we were on the way to visit my good friend Nancy and her sweet new baby at the Naval hospital this evening when Kelly nonchalantly told me she saw a BOBCAT today. I grew up in this desert and I had NEVER seen a live bobcat.

He was gorgeous! So the lady who runs the bed and breakfast wanted Kelly to watch the bobcat while she called animal control, the Joshua Tree National Park rangers, and whomever else might be willing to come and remove the cat from the property. I knew Kelly would be bobcat food, so I offered to stay in her place while she drove to get Shawn and the kids. It's not every day you see a protected species in the wild. I waited alone with him, about 10 yards away while everyone else was trying to figure out how to get rid of him. He was amazing! He watched my every move but barely twitched his ears. 

Here he is on a lower branch.. unfortunately this was before I got there with my zoom lens...

He's pretty well camoflauged in this one, but you can see his cute stubby tail sticking out on the right and his big kitty-cat face on the left. 

Once the inkeeper saw how fascinated the kids and I were with the animals, she offered to show us the resident Horned Owls. They were amazing too!

This guy below is the baby of the family. 

Last night on the way home from the National Park we spotted four snakes out warming themselves on the road. We kept our distance from this guy...

Well, I kept MY distance while Shawn tried to shoo him off the road with a long stick. He coiled up and rattled at us so we thought it would just be best if we left him to his own devices. 

Iron Age Road

When we were here job hunting and roaming around last March we took the Trailblazer up a road that was not meant for an SUV. Shawn vowed that if we were to move to 29 Palms that one of the first orders of business would be to conquer that road. And we did. It took us all day and I amost had a stroke a time or two, but we made it! 

JTNP

We went hiking Sunday in the Joshua Tree National Park. Ian said that he liked it more than Disneyland! I don't agree :) I LOVE Disneyland! It is, however, good for the kids to get out and experience the desert landscape and the endangered creatures around them. We didn't see many creatures, but we sure looked for them!

Horned Toad Hunting

We headed out early Saturday morning to go hunting for horned lizards. We didn't find any this time (probably too dry) but we saw some other really cool stuff!

This sign told us that we should be looking for gold :)

And Eureka! We found some! If you look very closely you can see the yellow shine of the gold in the sand. We walked through many washes and found lots of little tiny pieces. You can click on the picture to enlarge it and they're much easier to see!

I just liked the look of this old gnarly tree.

And this crazy jigsaw rock puzzle...

And we finally headed to the National Park Headquarters so that Ian could at least see a fake horned toad. Now that he knows exactly what they look like he'll be on the lookout. We fortunately didn't find any scorpions or tarantulas either so I'm sure that we'll have another hunting expedition here sometime soon. Hopefully when it cools off!

Joshua Tree National Park

Another awesome thing about living in 29 Palms is the proximity to the Joshua Tree National Park. Tonight we took a short drive up there to view the Leonid meteor shower. We didn't see a whole lot of shooting stars (I counted 5) but just being in the park at night is amazing! Of course, I already have plenty of fun night-time memories of the park... but tonight we saw all sorts of wildlife, including a kit fox, as well as several different types of smaller critters. It's time to break out the tent and do some heavy duty camping! 

ETA: I didn't take this picture although I wish I were so talented. I can't even use my camera at night because I haven't read the manual! Thanks to Google images for this beautiful shot!