Joshua Tree National Park

The park changes desert halfway through

Two deserts meet inside Joshua Tree National Park, and you can feel the switch from the driver's seat. The northern and western half is Mojave: higher, a few degrees cooler, and the only ground where the Joshua trees grow in any number. It is also where the granite piles sit. Hidden Valley, Barker Dam and Jumbo Rocks are the formations most people are picturing when they picture the park.

Drive south and the road drops. Somewhere on that descent the Joshua trees thin out and stop, and ocotillo and creosote take over. The lower ground is the Colorado Desert, hotter and far more open, and the Cholla Cactus Garden sits in the middle of it. Most visitors never see this half, because they enter near Joshua Tree village or Twentynine Palms, loop the rock formations and turn back the way they came.

The full run through is worth the fuel. Enter from the north and come out at Cottonwood on the south end near Interstate 10, or do it in reverse on the way in from the freeway. It takes a couple of hours without stopping, and considerably longer if you get out, which you should.

Sort the gate, the tank and the water before you leave

There are three entrances. The west entrance at Joshua Tree village is closest to most rental homes and busiest by a wide margin. The north entrance at Twentynine Palms usually moves faster in the morning. Cottonwood, at the south end, is the quiet one.

In fall and spring the line at the west entrance builds as the morning warms. Buy your pass online before you leave the house and get to the gate early. Cool-season weekends are the crush. A weekday in the same month feels like a different park.

There is no food, no gas and effectively no cell signal inside. Fill the tank in Yucca Valley or Twentynine Palms, download the map before you lose service, and carry more water than the day looks like it needs. Summer afternoons here are dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable. Hike early, be back at the car by midday, and save the rest for evening.

Roads inside are paved on the main loop and dirt beyond it, and some of those dirt roads want more clearance than a rental sedan has. Ask your local manager which entrance is behaving on the morning you plan to go, and whether the backcountry roads are worth attempting in whatever you drove out here.