Joshua Tree

Two sayings newcomers to this area hear on a daily basis from the locals: "This all used to be orange groves," and "It's just one hour to the beach, one hour to the mountains, and one hour to the desert."

Yesterday, on Amy's last day here, we opted for the desert. Joshua Tree National Park, to be exact.

As a child, I'd been to the little towns on the Park's north edge—Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms—but I don't remember ever going to the Park itself. In fact, I sort of wonder if it had even been designated a National Park back then.

What a fantastic surprise!

The northwestern quarter of the park, where most of the roads are located, is a wonderland of strange vegetation, weird outcroppings of rocks of all sizes, and mountain vistas.

There's a camera shot waiting at every turn in the road. The first picture here shows the trunk of a Joshua tree in the foreground and then several other specimens and one of the many rock hills in the center. The next two were taken at an area called Jumbo Rocks. Good name.

The weather was perfect—neither as ferociously hot as it can be in the summer nor as icy as it can get in the winter.

As Amy remarked, the place has a sort of soul-cleansing, peace-instilling effect.

There were others there, including a bus load of German tourists and an Asian couple in suit and wedding dress making what will certainly turn out to be a remarkable collection of wedding pictures. But the place is so vast that it was almost like having it all to ourselves.

About half-way on our drive from north to south, we came upon the Cholla Cactus Garden. This "jumping cactus" earned its name by attaching its segments to unwary passersby and doing it so readily that it seemed like the cactus jumped at the victim. Those nice, fuzzy looking branches are actually covered with thousands of barbed spines.

We got back to Loma Linda in plenty of time for my treatment—"just one hour to the desert." Whether it was due to being tired from the day's travels or relaxed from the Park, I think I actually drifted off to sleep during the 30 seconds in which the proton beam was doing its work. Is it even possible to go to sleep and wake up again in that short a time? Brian, the main tech, said, "Oh yes. That pod's really comfortable, isn't it? Just made for you."

Treatment count: 6 down, 39 to go.