Joshua Tree

During spring break, we decided to get out of town and go camping at our nearest National Park - Joshua Tree.  Amazingly enough, I have never actually been to Joshua Tree - at least not that I can remember.  What an unusual and interesting place - beautiful in its own way.

Dennis' parents happen to live just a few minutes from our campground, so we had to stop for a visit on the way over.

What do you think?  Does Nathan look like his grandma, or what?

They have a very interesting neighbor!  My kids had a great time visiting with this cute lama next door.

We went camping with my parents and with my sister Lisa's family.  Camping with family doubles the fun, for sure!

For Dennis, camping means trying to grow a beard.  That lasts for a while, until he gets tires of me not kissing him.  He always shaves it off eventually.

Alex and his big knife - he is ready for anything.

Grandma love hugs from teenage grandsons.  She is eating it up!  I don't blame her.  The truth is, Nathan is a big teddy bear.

On the first night, Dennis' parents came to join us for smokes around the bonfire.  Leon treated us to some amazing stories from his adventurous life and so interesting fun facts.  It was a treat for my kids to have both sets of grandparents there!

Good morning!  How'd you sleep?

Wake up boys, it's a beautiful day!

Grandpa making breakfast.

Camping is so fun because it gives you a chance to just sit around and visit in the great outdoors.

In the afternoon we decided to go for a hike.  Apparently, we all have a different idea of what "hike" means.  For Luke it means running and for Dylan, hiking involved a football and big boulders to climb.

The trail started out easy, but got pretty steep, but with some great views!

If there is a rock, Dylan will wind up on top of it, guaranteed.

Going back to camp meant more sitting around doing nothing.

Messing around in the tent.

The next morning, Dylan did not want to get up.  That might have something to do with the fact that I had a big camera and was trying to get a picture of him.  Some people don't like to wake up to a camera in their face.  Go figure.

The weather up in Joshua Tree was nice except for one thing - it was very, very windy up there, especially at night!  It was really bad - and loud!  I had a really hard time sleeping with the wind whipping the tent so noisily!  And the wind was blowing so hard that the side of the tent was pushing down on my head all night.  It was a long, long night.

Good morning cute boys!

My niece, Andi, had fractured her foot by jumping off the plaything in our backyard the week before, so her dad had to carry her to the bathroom.

The wind settled down, so I decided to go for a bike ride.  But the wind came up hard again shortly after I started my ride, and in the area of the park that we were in, there were no roads going through the park like I had hoped, so the only place to ride was through the city of Yucca Valley, so I didn't ride very long.

That evening before when we were sitting by the campfire a family drove up to the campsite right next to us.  We couldn't believe it when we recognized that it was the Frank family!  Their son Dallin is a good friend of my boys, and the mom, Jen, is a friend of mine.  That was a treat.  The kids were glad to have some more friends there!  What a fun coincidence!

Jen is a photographer like me, so we had some fun wandering around looking for things to take pictures of.  I let her borrow a few of my lenses, and then she just looked like this.  Click.

Here are some of the pictures I took when we were playing around...

My macro lens is so fun to play with!

We were lucky - some of the Joshua trees were in bloom!  (They don't bloom every year.)  I really thought the flowers looked like popcorn.  We could tweak that primary song a bit.  "Popcorn popping on the Joshua tree!"

It was a great camping trip, despite the wind.

We have such a grab time camping with family.  We are getting so excited because next week we are all going up to another national park to go camping - this time it will be Yosemite!  That will be very different from Joshua tree!  Can't wait!