joshua tree

This year there will be more camping. I have declared it so, and so it shall be. We started the year with a trip to Joshua Tree. We arrived a bit late for a holiday weekend but by some great fortune were able to snag a secluded spot behind a boulder. It was one of the quietest campgrounds I’ve ever been to. It was comfortably warm in the sun during the day and quite chilly at night, though not unbearably so. We ate lots of camp food, split logs, did some rock climbing and made s’mores around the fire with our friends Jenn and Scott.

The thing I love the most about going camping, besides the quiet, is being able to come home and see the place you live with a new perspective. This applies to most travel I suppose, but there’s something particular about car trips. You spend all this time examining new places, trying to understand them from the outside. It’s easy to keep those inquisitive lenses on for just awhile when you return to try and see what your home is like from a different angle.

Mostly though I just like the quiet. The quiet and the dark and the stillness. There are no pressures on you to do anything at all except feed yourself and perhaps explore if you are so inclined.

This was the third national park we’ve visited in the past year. I’d love to say that I’d like to visit them all, but with 8 in Alaska, 3 in Hawaii, and several on other various islands, visiting all 59 seems quite daunting. Perhaps we’ll just start with the 9 parks in California (that makes us 1/3 of the way there already). Yes, I like numbers. This is something you should know about me.