Joshua Tree National Park wins the award for the first major place to get a second entry in this blog. We had such a great day sharing this National Park with John, Lila and Marina. We spent the entire day driving and hiking the various areas of this park. It is about 35 miles long. We entered at the south end and climbed constantly all day. The terrain starts out dry and exactly what all us northerners would expect a desert to look like. Slowly,we got into rockier and rockier terrain. John won the guess that it was all made of Magma. We stopped and hiked through a huge batch of Cholla cacti (last picture). They are a cool cactus with long, silvery spikes on them. We even found one that had been killed off and only the inner skeleton was left standing. It was hollow and very hard with many small holes. Our favourite part of the day was the last hike at Hidden Valley. It is about 1 mile loop that takes you through all sorts of cool rock formations. It was a special day we will all remember.