Day 143, a lovely day in Joshua Tree

Day 143, November 26, 35km and 404m climb, Jumbo Rocks campground Joshua Tree National Park to freedom camp just outside Joshua Tree to the west.

It was a bit chilly overnight. We are getting soft again after coping with Colorado for so long and now finding 2 degrees cold! Still, it was a beautiful sunrise and with a hot coffee and a hot chocolate we were both ready to ride by 8am. 

It was a short ride on tar seal to the turnoff onto the sand road. Here we met Uri, originally from Bulgaria, getting ready to ride. We headed off along the corrugations and Uri quickly caught us up. We had a lovely couple of hours riding with him and we learnt a lot about the Salton Sea and water reuse in California.  Fascinating that the area has been in a drought for 4 years and they are working hard on ways to reuse water and make it potable again. If that is one thing we have learnt about riding in the desert, it is how precious water is. While we carry a water filter, tablets and uv steripen, if there is no water to treat then you are a bit screwed. So far we have been fortunate that we have carried more than enough for our multiple days away from a water source. It's a lot to carry though!

After we parted ways with Uri, we headed off up the main climb of the day. This was a sandy track leading up and over a wash to bring us out to the head of the Berdoo Canyon. Up to this point we had traversed beautiful Sandstone country with many Joshua Trees but now it was time to leave the high Mojave Desert and drop back into the lower Colorado Desert, leaving the Joshua trees behind.

The canyon dropped steeply and was fun riding; rocky, sandy, rough. We have stopped just on the edge of the National Park for the night in a quiet side canyon away from the road. We are still at about 600m but already it is significantly warmer than at the same time last night. The weather remains stunning and although there was a cold breeze dropping into the canyon, this has died away completely now to a still and clear evening. Another lovely day in the desert.