More Joshua Tree

The kids are off for the week for their Thanksgiving break. We drove out to Joshua Tree to go climbing  first thing Monday morning. We were hoping that it would be less crowded since it is a weekday and not quite a holiday yet. It was nice when we got there but as the morning wore on, it was just as crowded as the Veteran's Day weekend!

We went back to "Trashcan Rock" first since it has a really easy climb for Caitlyn. It was pretty cold. The rock just sucks all the warmth from your hands!

When it got too unbearably crowded there, we moved on to "Cyclops Rock."

We set out to climb a 150 foot route called "The Eye." It looked really neat but seemed really scary. I wasn't too sure about it but it wasn't too bad in the end. Christian always leads and sets up an anchor at the top for us.

Emily got to climb about halfway up after Christian came back down to get more equipment.

I made it all the way up to the top (but just barely...as there were other climbers impatiently waiting for our route by the time Christian set up our anchor).

We ended up just letting them have it after I made it to the top. Emily didn't get a chance to finish the route. We'll have to go again next time. I think we all agreed that it was by far the most fun route we have ever been on. It was not overly difficult but just challenging enough to keep it interesting and it was beautiful.

There is an easier way up from the backside and the girls played on that half the time. When we finished with the Eye, we decided to rappel off an overhang next to where we were climbing. It looked super scary from the top. It took some time for Christian to set up an anchor for us. He was trying to teach Emily how to set up an anchor at the same time. By the time it was ready, the sun was getting pretty low in the sky and it was getting really cold. The girls decided that they were not going to do it afterall at this point. Christian had it all set up so he decided to give it a try. I went next. It is crazy scary if you look down but it was super fun and the view was spectacular. It is a 100 foot drop. Christian convinced Emily to just give it a try when I got down.

It was almost entirely dark by the time Emily started down but I managed to get a couple of shots with my flash. She had a blast. I think Caitlyn would really like it as well, if she can get up the courage to go over the edge.

We will be doing that again next time as well, but hopefully during the day, with the sun out and while it is warm!

Pinnacles - Anniversary Weekend

The kids had Thursday and Friday off for parent/teacher conferences and since it was our anniversary weekend, we decided to go somewhere to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary at the Pinnacles National Monument Park.

We met with the kids teachers on Thursday morning and left directly from the school. It is quite a drive. The kids have not gone up the 5 before so it was neat showing the kids all the fruit and nut trees and cotton plants in the great central valley. It's important that they know where their food is coming from.

The sun was already starting to set by the time we got close to our destination and we ended up setting up our tent in the dark.

It is a really beautiful drive. I wish that we had more daylight to see everything when we got closer to our destination.

We got up fairly early the next morning to start our adventures. We couldn't believe how many facilities they had for the rangers working in the park. For such a small park, I don't understand why they have a veritable army working up there. For the life of us, we couldn't figure out what they actually did. I think we saw two or three actually working on our entire extended weekend. One was working in the visitor center collecting fees and selling souvenirs, the other was actually picking up trash and cleaning the bathrooms, the last one was cleaning a pool. Why they are cleaning and maintaining a concrete pool in the middle of the wilderness filled with thousands of gallons of water when there is a drought and gets down to below freezing at night, I can't tell you. As a matter of fact, it is so dry out there that open flames were forbidden. So I guess they used a couple of the army they have assembled there to screw on metal signs to every fire grate, bbq pit and fire pit in the park...which was considerable.

As we parked near the nature center to get ready for our hike, we saw 8 different park rangers pull into the parking lot (each in a different vehicle) before we headed out. We checked on and off for the next 3 days. They never opened the nature center once.

We started out our trip hiking up to the Bear Gulch caves.

The kids had so much fun. There is enough light in most of the cave from the light streaming between boulders and such but there are darker sections here and there where we needed our headlights to see where we were going. A small section of the cave was closed since it was under water. When we emerged from the cave, we were greeted by the sight of the Bear Gulch Reservoir. It is really beautiful.

While there is water still in the reservoir, you can see that the level is quite low.

The kids couldn't get enough of the caves so we headed back through the Bear Gulch Cave and went in search of the Balconies Cave.

From there, Christian decided that we would hike around and take the High Peaks trail. We saw some of the endangered Condors flying off in the distance.

It was quite a hike. By the time we made the loop back around, we were pretty tired and cold. It was basically dark by the time we made it back down to the parking lot. We still had our headlights but walked mostly in the light of the near full moon.

We had no trouble getting to sleep at the end of the day as we were pretty tuckered out. We were a little worried though because it was considerably colder that night. The previous night, we had a nice cloud cover that kept us fairly warm, but it was all gone now and it got down to at least 30 degrees this night. When we woke up, there was ice all over our tent. We brought in extra blankets from the car for the kids so it wasn't that bad in the end. We got up with the sun again the next day as we planned a full day of climbing.

We were a little worried about the rock crumbling beneath us but we didn't have too much trouble. We finally got helmets for the girls as well so that we didn't have to worry so much. In the end, we did some pretty fun climbs. Caitlyn didn't even seem to have too much trouble climbing on these rocks. The biggest problem was getting a nice easy route to climb when there are so many other climbers and the hoards of tourists that streamed out once the sun was high in the sky.

We had gone back up to the Bear Gulch area to climb and continued again until the sun went down. There was a full moon so you could see pretty well and the kids had fun going back through the cave in the dark with only their headlights to light their way.

All in all, we all had a pretty fun trip. None of us had ever been here before so it is always fun to explore new place. The only problem is finding a place to camp in an unknown area. We don't do camp grounds for obvious reasons. 

San Dimas Nature Center

On Veteran's Day, we went to meet up with an old friend and colleague of Christian's and her family. We met up at the San Dimas Nature Center for a picnic lunch.

They have a few animals on display that are mostly rescues. Of course, because of the area we live in, a lot of the animals were things like snakes and spiders and such. But there were also owl's, deer and tortoises. They had a raccoon but it attacked one of the caretakers and almost killed him, so it got sent away!

There was also a playground there that the kids could play at and they had a lot of fun.

There are also many acres of nature trails but we didn't get a chance to explore those as Christian's friend is expecting her 2nd son very shortly but the kids played until the sun went down anyway.

Husband's Birthday

Christian's birthday this year landed on a Saturday this year. We decided to make a day of it in Joshua Tree (climbing of course), so we had his birthday dinner on Friday night as soon as he got back from work.

We had to have him open his presents before the trip since we got him a bunch of climbing equipment!

We got up early and headed out to Joshua Tree as soon as the sun came up. We wanted to get out there as early has possible as it is a holiday weekend and it would be extra crowded...and it definitely was.

There were lots of people climbing next to us and plenty of sight seers taking pictures of the climbers like we were part of the park attraction. It is weird. But it wasn't too bad for the most part. You can get away from the people somewhat if you go for a rock that has a long approach. The problem is finding a place to park.

It was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect. The climbing was good and we continued until the sun went down. It gets cold pretty fast though.

We forgot our jackets in the car so the kids wrapped the rope tarps around themselves and I stole Christian's jacket. Luckily, we had our headlights since we had to hike back to our car in the dark!