JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK
A walk through the Mojave Desert in California
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We have been traveling the world for twenty years. We already had 45 countries behind us — but America was not among them. Somehow it just never worked out for us: routes kept leading in other directions, and then Covid-19 first cancelled our cruise from Miami and, after the pandemic, moved it to the Persian Gulf. If you are curious, you can watch the film about our cruise here.
And so, in the autumn of 2026, America became the 46th country on our travel list!
Columbus discovered America from the sea and, to the very end, believed he had sailed to India. We are discovering it more honestly: we know exactly where we have landed 🙂 In the morning we flew out of Calgary, where it was minus 7 and you wanted to put on everything warm you owned, all at once. A few hours later we walked out of the plane in California — and there it was plus 29, sun and palm trees. Thirty-six degrees of difference in a single flight! That jump from winter into summer is how our America began. And one of the first places we went to discover the new country was Joshua Tree National Park — the Mojave Desert, strange trees and mountains made of boulders. And here it is, the moment this whole trip was made for: the "Entering Joshua Tree National Park" sign, and next to it the famous arrowhead shield of the US National Park Service. We had seen hundreds of those shields before — in movies, in magazines, in other people's photographs. And now we were standing in front of a real one, our very first. This, by the way, is the first American national park of our lives. The first of many, we hope. Inside there are more than three thousand square kilometers of desert: the park is huge, and in one day you can only get a first taste of it. Which is exactly what we were about to do.
And right away, some practical information for those who follow in our footsteps: a pass for one car costs 30 US dollars — and for that money you can drive around the park for a whole 7 days! Payment at the entrance is by card only; they do not take cash at the booth. Let's go and see it all!
The road through the park is already a sight in itself. Perfectly smooth asphalt runs off beyond the horizon, and on both sides another planet begins: rusty-red mountains of boulders piled on top of each other, and trees unlike anything we had seen in any of our previous 45 countries.
We drove slowly and kept slowing down at the side of the road. How can you drive past, when there is a ready-made postcard waiting around every bend? You will see it all yourselves in a moment: as always, we took three times more photographs than fit into one article 🙂
And here they are, the owners of this land — the Joshua trees in person. The first ones that met us really up close. They stand there waving their branches in all directions, as if saying: "Come in, dear guests!"
Honestly: they do not look like any normal tree. Part tree, part cactus, part fairy-tale creature from a children's book. In America they even call them "Dr. Seuss trees": there was a famous children's writer, and in his book "The Lorax" there grew exactly such absurd trees, with fluffy tops on thin trunks. Later we learned many more amazing things about these "trees". But more about that a little further on — everything in its time. First, let's just get acquainted.
And now look at these mountains. Don't they look as if a giant child was playing with blocks, then got bored and ran away? Huge rounded boulders are piled on top of each other in whole hills — and they hold! They don't fall!
The secret of these mountains is this: they are more than a hundred million years old. Long ago, deep underground, molten magma cooled and became granite. The stone cracked, and for centuries underground water polished the corners of those blocks — the way water smooths a sugar cube. And then the earth above them crumbled and weathered away, and the finished "blocks" appeared on the surface. So these mountains were first "built" underground, and only later shown to people.
We only had to climb a little higher — and a whole valley of Joshua trees opened up in front of us. Not ten, not a hundred — thousands! All the way to the horizon. A whole forest, only this forest is a desert one: instead of greenery there is sand, stones and thorns.
And that is where the first real understanding of America's scale came to us. We had only arrived yesterday, we had not really seen anything yet — and already we were standing in the middle of a landscape that does not fit into the frame, however you turn the camera. Our discovery of America began with a feeling: everything here is big. The roads, the distances — and valleys like this one.
We turned onto one of the trails and went on foot. Because this park cannot be seen from a car window: you simply will not notice half of what is interesting. That layered rock on the right, for example — it looks like a huge stone layer cake. And ahead, look, a yucca has opened its sword-leaves: in the desert almost everything that grows knows how to stand up for itself.
There is a simple rule here: walk slowly, and watch your feet and your surroundings at the same time. Your feet — so you don't step on a thorn. Your surroundings — so you don't miss the beauty.
And this is the sacred ritual of every road trip — a stop by the road "just to sit down and have a coffee". Our white pickup, desert all around, and sky filling half the frame. Everyone knows that the main goal of tourists is to take as much food as possible, carry it as far away as possible, and eat it there. We always do exactly that 🤣 But seriously: it is in minutes like these that a journey is remembered. Not galloping from place to place, but like this: you sit, you say nothing, you watch the clouds drift over the Mojave. And meanwhile America slowly, quietly becomes yours.
Well, this photo needs no long explanations — I simply could not resist and stood like a Joshua tree! Arms out to the sides and up, like branches. Because, according to legend, that is exactly how these trees got their name. In the middle of the 19th century, Mormon settlers were crossing this desert on their way west. Seeing the trees with their branches raised to the sky, they remembered the biblical Joshua, who raised his hands in prayer and pointed the way for travelers to the Promised Land. That is how the yucca became the "Joshua tree". A beautiful legend, isn't it? And I, it turns out, am almost a monument to that story in this photo 🙂
And now a game: "Find Nataly". Do you see the tiny figure between the boulders in the center of the frame? That is her. And this is the best photo for understanding the size of the stones here: each such "little rock" is the size of a house, or even two. We walked among these blocks like ants on a giant's playground. Climbers from all over the world, by the way, come to Joshua Tree precisely for these rocks: there are thousands of climbing routes here. We did not start climbing them — we honestly admit that we are contemplative tourists. We can see everything perfectly well from below, too.
Here are two egg-shaped boulders lying right in the middle of the trail, as if some huge dinosaur had dropped them there. In this park you quickly get used to the fact that stones come in every shape: round, flat, stretched out, stood up on their edge. And every stone has its own biography, millions of years long. Long ago, cracks in the granite let water inside, the water did its work — and the block split and rounded in exactly this way, and no other. That is why there are no two identical boulders in the park. We checked: we looked very carefully.
And this is no longer a giant's blocks — this is a whole fortress! Look: towers, walls, loopholes — all that is missing is a flag on the highest tower. It is hard to believe that this was built not by an army of builders, but only by time, water and wind.
Such little stone towns are the park's calling card, together with the trees. There are celebrities with names here, too: Skull Rock, which the rains really have carved to look like a skull with eye sockets, and Arch Rock. We did not get to them this time — the park, let us remind you, is more than three thousand square kilometers. There will be a reason to come back!
You make friends with these trees quickly, I think. You stand there repeating their poses — and aren't you just one more member of the Joshua family? 🙂
Look at the space here, and the silence. There are almost no people around; all you hear is the wind in the thorns. At that moment we caught ourselves thinking once again: only yesterday at this time we were freezing in Calgary waiting for our flight. And today we are in the desert, in America — with a whole new country of discoveries ahead of us.
We walk on, deeper into the stone hills. The trail winds between the boulders, and around every bend there is a new "room" of this stone house: now a narrow passage, now a whole hall under the open sky.
And in the foreground, you see, stands the dry skeleton of an old Joshua tree. That is also part of the park's story: the trees here live a long time, on average about 150 years, and some old-timers for several centuries. But even their age comes to an end one day, and then the desert leaves behind just such a thorny monument to itself.
And now — our favorite attraction of that day. Look carefully: a huge flat boulder is lying on two stone pillars. Like a roof. Like a lid on a pot. And it does not fall! It has not fallen for thousands of years, if you count how much time nature spent on this construction. We bravely climbed right under that stone roof — and once again became convinced: the best architect in this park is erosion. It carves arches, builds towers, and puts up stone mushrooms like this one. No glue, honestly — only physics and time. By the way, if you would like to keep traveling with us, follow us on Instagram and TikTok — we post videos from our trips that do not fit into the articles, and you can continue the conversation and ask us questions in our Telegram channel .
It is time to meet the main hero up close — here a person is standing next to a real, adult Joshua tree. Judge the height: the tree is about three times taller than he is. And that is with it growing very slowly, just a few centimeters a year, and starting to branch only after its first flowering. Every fork in such a tree is a whole chapter of its long life. And now the main surprise, which we ourselves learned only here: the Joshua tree is not a tree at all! And not a cactus. It is a giant yucca, a relative of the agave. It does not even have growth rings like real trees, so scientists can only estimate the age of each of these giants roughly, by its height. There you go: America's most famous "wood" turned out to be an overgrown grass 🙂
And one more fact that made us a little uneasy: these yuccas are pollinated by one single tiny species of moth. No moth — no trees. This whole valley rests on very thin threads.
Honestly, fantastic — the caption of this photo does not exaggerate. Smooth, almost polished blocks the size of a bus, and between them young Joshuas reach upward like schoolchildren in line: each in its own way, all in different directions. The park, by the way, was protected quite early: back in 1936 it was declared a national monument — thanks to one determined woman, Minerva Hoyt, who fell in love with the desert and spent years convincing Washington that cacti and yuccas also deserve protection. And Joshua Tree became a full national park in 1994. Thank you, Minerva — without her, we might now be looking not at a park, but at something completely different.
A classic Joshua Tree shot — the kind people come here for: trees in the foreground, and behind them whole ridges of piled-up boulders. A poster, a postcard, a phone wallpaper — all in one photo.
By the way, it was music that brought world fame to these places. In 1987 the band U2 released the album "The Joshua Tree" — and millions of people heard this name for the first time. True, there is a funny detail here: the tree from that album's cover was photographed not here at all, but two hundred miles away, near the town of Darwin. The band Eagles, on the other hand, shot the cover of their very first album, "Eagles" (1972), right here in this park: photographer Henry Diltz captured the sunset over the silhouettes of cacti, and inside the gatefold of the record — the band itself by a campfire. So tourists come here for one photograph, and musicians too, and... well, who else — see the next photo.
A bride! A real one, in a white dress and with a bouquet — in the middle of the desert, among cacti and boulders. Next to her, a photographer with a backpack; bridesmaids help carry the train and the veil. A wedding photo session in Joshua Tree Park turns out to be a whole industry: sunset light, alien landscapes, and not a single random passerby in the frame.
We, of course, wished the couple happiness — mentally, so as not to disturb the shoot. And we thought that the place chosen to begin a family life is symbolic: the Joshua tree showed travelers the way to the Promised Land. May it show this couple the way to happiness, too.
And this is what a real forest of Joshua trees looks like from a distance. Hundreds and hundreds of silhouettes run to the rusty-red ridge on the horizon. And every one of them grows only here: in the wild, Joshua trees are found almost exclusively in the Mojave Desert and nowhere else on the planet. This forest is the only one of its kind. But it was time for us to climb higher. Ahead of us waited the park's most famous viewpoint — and the encounter for which this park is called unique. Two deserts. In one place. Let's go up!
Here it is, the Keys View viewpoint — almost 1,600 meters above sea level, on the crest of the Little San Bernardino Mountains. And here it is, the view that took our breath away. Below, as far as the eye can see, lies the Coachella Valley, and behind it, chain after chain of mountains turning blue in the haze.
This is exactly where the invisible border runs, the one we climbed up here for. Behind us remained the high and cooler Mojave Desert — the kingdom of the Joshua trees. And below, in front of us, lies the low and hot Colorado Desert. One park — two completely different deserts, two different natures. A meeting like this is rare, and it is precisely what makes Joshua Tree loved all over the world.
I sat down on a stone and simply looked. Below — the Coachella Valley and the town of Palm Springs, where we had come from. Straight across the valley runs the famous San Andreas Fault — the very one they make disaster movies about. From here it can be seen as a line along the foot of the mountains.
And if the day is clear, to the southeast glitters the Salton Sea — California's largest lake, lying below sea level. And above the whole valley stands Mount San Jacinto, more than 3,300 meters high. Friends, for an hour we could not tear ourselves away from this view. On our very first trip, America decided to show us itself in all its glory.
From here you can clearly see how the color of the earth changes: the rusty slopes of the Mojave gradually sink down and dissolve into the bluish haze of the low desert. The wind on the crest was so strong that you had to hold on to everything that could fly away — including your own plans to leave quickly. We did not want to leave! But the sun was already visibly sinking towards the mountains, and we had big plans for that evening: we wanted to see what the sunset would do to the rusty-red rocks down below, in the valley of the trees. Let's head back down!
And so the day began to run out. The sun was still high, but the light had already become soft and golden, and the mountains began lining up in layers: the near ones rusty-red, the far ones blue, and the farthest almost transparent, like a mirage.
At minutes like these, the desert does not seem empty and dead at all. Quite the opposite: the bushes, stones and slopes seem to have been waiting specially for this hour to show all their colors. We drove back down, into the valley of the Joshua trees, hurrying to take our seats at the main show of the day.
And the show began! Look how the rocks lit up: in a few minutes the sunset sun painted the grey-and-rust granite pure gold. The trees below are already standing in shadow and look like black silhouettes, and the mountains behind them are burning. It is for the sake of these ten or fifteen minutes that it is worth coming here towards evening. In the daytime the park is beautiful; at sunset it is magical. We stood and photographed, photographed and stood. And when you shoot in a place like this, of course not everything comes out. But what did come out is right here in front of you.
And the final shot of the day — me against those same golden rocks and a Joshua tree which, I think, specially settled itself behind my shoulder. The first day in the first American desert was coming to an end.
And yet the park does not end at sunset — quite the opposite. Joshua Tree is officially recognized as one of the best places on the planet for stargazing: there is almost no city light pollution here, and the Milky Way can be seen in all its glory. This time we did not stay until dark — we left the stars for our next visit, as well as another half of this huge park. We now have more reasons to return than there are days in a vacation 🙂
And so began our American journey: our 46th country, our first national park, and our first desert—a place we fell in love with instantly. Our exploration of America continues: ahead lie Palm Springs, canyons, waterfalls, and many more Californian wonders. We’ll show you everything and tell you all about it! If you enjoyed our report, please share it with your friends. And if there’s anything we missed, let us know in the comments—we’re definitely planning to return to Joshua Tree, and your tips will come in handy!
