After leaving Death Valley, we headed towards Joshua Tree, where we were very excited to have showers and laundry and sleep in beds again!
Our original plan after Joshua Tree was going to stay with my college roomate in Phoenix and have a super fun taco night and then go to Saguaro National Park the next day. Sadly it did not work out like that...we were all getting sick and so I booked last-minute hotel rooms in Phoenix so we could keep our germs to ourselves and then the winter storms got crazy and we ended up driving through (and no refunds on the hotel rooms, lame!!). The saddest part was when I looked at Google Maps and realized we were less than 7 minutes from my friend's house. Such a bummer.
But I digress--we got to Joshua Tree in the afternoon and hiked around a bunch and then I started wishing we had a week there. We visited Skull Rock and then headed to the Hall of Horrors but there was a mine somewhere in there too...
Soooooo much rock scrambling!
Seriously love these trees, you can imagine the Lorax popping out at any second.
If I recall correctly, these pics are from Hidden Valley.
We drove a couple of unpaved roads that were my favorite (I think going to/from the mine?) because there was hardly anyone else out there and the Joshua trees were so close to the car that we could have reached out to touch them. Also--did you know that they start out all palm-tree-ish and then they grow bark-ish stuff as they get older? Seriously so cool, I loved seeing so many in different stages of growth.
The kids LOVED all the rock scrambling and would have been happy to take up residence.
And Neil had a great time too (I was babying my massively swollen ankle and mostly just took pictures).
Overlooking the San Andreas Fault & Coachella valley...
Honestly pretty cool to see how prominent the San Andreas Fault is.
Then we headed south towards the edge of the park towards Phoenix. But first we stopped to see the cholla, aka teddybear cactus, which look soooo fluffy and soft BUT THEY ARE DEVIL PLANTS.
Somehow--not exactly sure how--Matthew leaned down to examine a cactus and came up with a chunk of it hanging from his cheek. He said "Mom Mom Mom help!" and I reacted on pure instinct and pulled it out of his cheek with my fingers. Then Neil had to use pliers to pull it out of my fingers and holy cow, it burned sooo much.
We stopped at the Cottonwood Visitor Center and ate lunch...
Then we happily went on our way towards Phoenix. By this time we were all super tired and very much looking forward to going to bed (remember we were all not feeling great) and then I got a weather alert and realized oh my gosh, we are due to get a crazy winter storm the day we get back! And then I started looking at our travel path and basically the entire middle of the country was going to get pounded (Winter Storm Blair).
So after an hour of frantic calculation we ended up driving through the night to get home and I was SO bummed (and also, it was a horrendously long time to be in the car).
So we went from driving past wildfires in Arizona just off the freeway...
To these suuuuper fun signs all across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. We stopped for gas and 5-minute bathroom breaks and that was it; we could see on the radar that the storm was about 20 minutes behind us and it was seriously pretty freaky because I was reading the traffic and weather reports for cities we'd just gone through and they were a MESS. So we felt like we could not stop or slow down a bit.
Thankfully we got home safely with nary a flake of snow at our house (it really came down later!) and only a couple sketchy times when we intersected with outlying storm bands, but nothing as scary as coming through Vail on our way out a few weeks ago!
Then we watched the snow start to come down and wondered if Abigail would be able to make her flight out on Tuesday morning, since everything Sunday and Monday was sketchy enough that airlines in Indy were offering free rebooking. I can't remember how much snow we ended up getting but it was a pretty decent amount. Somewhere between 8-14 inches but I honestly can't remember!
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