On Christmas morning, C and I woke not to stuffed stockings or piles of presents beneath a tree (we had done that the Sunday before we started our trip), but to a travel day. Today, we would completely depart from the itinerary of my 1984 family trip to Los Angeles. We were driving to Joshua Tree National Park.

Among C and my favorite things to do (besides seeing Broadway musicals, visiting aquariums, enjoying amusement parks, and eating at Hard Rock Cafes) is visiting National Parks. A big part of deciding on southern California for our winter holiday was the chance to visit some of the parks I have long wanted to. I wondered why my mother and Aunt L had not made Joshua Tree, just a 2.5-hour drive from Los Angeles, part of our 1984 vacation. Though they were not particularly outdoorsy, the bigger issue was that Joshua Tree did not exist as a national park in the 80s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established Joshua Tree as a National Monument in 1936, but it did not become a National Park until 1994.

C and I packed up, had breakfast, and called an Uber to take us to Los Angeles International Airport, where I had a rental car waiting. As it was Christmas, I fully expected another Chinese-American Uber driver, but instead we had an Algerian American transplant from the mid-west with a love for Italian pop music. As we cruised easily through the largely empty streets, I recognized the songs but could not place them. When I asked the driver, he told me it was Eros Ramazzotti, and I was transported back to the summer of 2000 when I backpacked through Europe and first heard these songs. This trip was giving me more travel flashbacks than I had anticipated.

Getting to the airport went quickly enough, but there was a long line at the car rental office. It took an hour to get through it, so we were on the road later than I had hoped. Still, the traffic, even on Los Angeles’ notorious freeways, remained light and soon enough we were beyond the city limits and heading into the desert.

We arrived in Yucca Valley, California, population 22,000, one of the small cities that lie along the northern borders of the National Park. We checked into our motel and grabbed a bite to eat at the nearby Denny’s so that we might get at least a little time in the park. I was reminded again that travel in the winter restricted our sightseeing with the sun setting so early, around 4:45 PM. Yet, summertime visits to the desert mean scorching temperatures.

The drive to the West Station entrance of Joshua Tree National Park is 25 miles from our hotel in Yucca Valley. The winding road took longer than expected and the line to enter the park was also unexpected. But the park is popular for night sky viewing and camping, and it would seem the Christmas holiday is an excellent time to do it. So, once I purchased our annual America the Beautiful park pass from the ranger, we only time for a 30-minute drive in and a few photos of the eponymous trees set against rock formations and a pinkening sky before it was time to turn around. It was a great introduction to the stark beauty of Joshua Tree. C very much wanted to get out and run around and made me promise to let her scamper over the rocks on our return.

On our full day in Joshua Tree, we drove down the highway to Twentynine Palms to begin with the Oasis of Mara, north of the park’s north entrance. Unlike much of Joshua Tree, where the flora are primarily succulents, like the Joshua tree, the oasis has palms and grasses that survive with the underground springs. The indigenous Serrano people named the area “Mara” meaning “the place of little springs and much grass.” C and I enjoyed a little stroll around the oasis area.

Then we entered the park at the North Entrance. We turned off from the Park Boulevard and onto Pinto Basin Road. Soon after the turn off we came to our first grouping of large rocks at the Belle campground; C insisted we stop. She needed to climb! After a good long stop for rock scampering and photography, we drove on to the next stop at White Tank. The rock formations are impressive. These are actually not mere rocks, but massive granite boulders piled atop one another. Some more scampering on rocks occurred – with me joining in! – before driving on to the next site.

The Cholla Cactus Garden is an area just off the main road blanketed with some 10 acres of the cactus known as Teddybear cholla. These cacti certainly look cute and fuzzy but are anything but with extremely sharp barbs with a reputation to painfully latch on to passersby. There is a pedestrian trail, partially boarded, through these plants but one can get as close as one dares. That surprised me. Given the silly things that some people get up to in our national parks, visitors are still given quite a bit of leeway. After about a half hour there, C and I departed unscathed. We had already been in the park several hours and it was time for lunch. I had opted to drive out of the park into Twentynine Palms for lunch rather than to pack one. We grabbed lunch at a Tex-Mex place in town and then returned to the park.

Our first stop was Jumbo Rocks. It is an apt description as the size of the rock formations and boulders were easily the biggest we had seen that day and spread out over a larger area. This campground also seemed more popular and the crowds of visitors were larger than we had run into in the boulder areas off Pinto Basin Road. We parked where we could and followed the parking lot to a trailhead into the boulders. I think we got off the Jumbo Rocks trail on to the Heart Rock and Arch Rock trails. Then C just wanted to climb over whatever she could in whatever direction took her fancy. There were points – like around Heart Rock – where we saw many other people, and others where we might see no one else for a five minutes or so. We completely lost track of time. The weather was beautiful, the temperatures warm but very comfortable, and the sky sapphire blue. It was just us climbing up and down and between rocks.

But I knew we had only such much time given the early winter sunset. We made our way back to the car and drove on a little ways to the Skull Rock area. There we did more climbing amongst the rocks, but we did not have time for the same carefree wanderings. I wanted us to get to Keys View for the sunset with a stop at Hidden Valley along the way.

Unfortunately, at Hidden Valley the parking lot was completely full. I drove through four times very slowly – and we were not alone in doing this – but a spot never opened. I gave up and drove towards Keys View but there too we ran into an issue, the road was closed off with a sign “Road opens just before sunset” and a ranger standing sentinel to make sure visitors obeyed. But it was not long til sunset. As I turned around and left the turn off, rangers were closing off more of the road, not opening it. We would not get to visit one of the park’s primary sunset locations. I turned back toward Hidden Valley hoping we might still have a chance to visit and lucked out with a parking space on my third time through the lot.

I planned to find the Hall of Horrors, a slim chasm between two high rock walls. I had read about it before the trip and wanted photos of C standing with legs and arms spread touching both sides of the Hall. I failed though to note the coordinates of the Hall and we wandered about aimlessly for 20 minutes without finding it or even a clue as to where it might be. C was chomping at the bit to get some more boulder climbing in and begged me to give up our search. Disappointed, I did.

Yet as the sun set across the boulders, desert, scrubs, and Joshua trees at Hidden Valley, we were treated to a magnificent burst of orange as the blue deepened in twilight. Perhaps sundown at Keys View was great that day, I do not know, but it was definitely perfect at Hidden Valley.

We ate a simple dinner from the supermarket in the motel room that night as we relaxed from our day of climbing adventures. I would have liked another day at least in Joshua Tree, but the following day would be a travel day on to our next destination.