Simnett Travels

Tuesday, May 31st – Tijuana River Regional Park, San Diego, California - Day 110  We woke up to ants all over the floor of our trailer. They were tiny little ants and they were moving in vey orderly lines all over the trailer floor. We cleaned the whole trailer of ants as thoroughly as we could. Gen prepared a concoction to kill them. The kids went off to play with their friends on the play structure.   Our first stop was the Cabrillo National Monument, next to downtown San Diego. The Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, in 1542, was the first European to set foot on the west coast of the USA and establish a colony. The visitor centre explored the impact on Indigenous populations and the extent of the Spanish efforts to explore the continent. The monument was on a cliff looking over downtown San Diego near the place where he first arrived.   We hiked up to the lighthouse to admire the views. You could walk up almost to the top of t...

Monday, May 30th – Dripping Springs State Park to Tijuana River Regional Park, San Diego, California   We woke up worried that the camp host would come and bust us for staying in someone else’s spot. It didn’t happen. The camp host was happy going about his business as we were happy going about ours. The kids spent the morning playing on a hillside with a group of other children. We got some suggestions from their parents on what to do in Cali. Overall, we got out early to finish the hour drive to San Diego.   Our destination was the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park. The Tijuana River is basically a sewage river that starts in Tijuana, Mexico and flows across the border to the ocean near San Diego. This upsets people in San Diego because it affects water quality at their beautiful beaches. An international effort was made to spend billions to clean up the river, removing 400 tonnes of garbage, and build the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park. When we spoke to them...

Sunday, May 29th – Joshua Tree National Park – South to Dripping Springs State Park, California - Day 108  We relaxed in the morning. We gradually got packed up and out. Just as we were packing up, we saw this massive rectangular RV pass us pulling a jeep. It was a behemoth.  We headed towards Palm Springs. A swim shower and resupply was necessary. Palm Springs was a green oasis in the desert. It was a beautiful town with gorgeous roadside gardens. We did some shopping and decided to head to the pool. The pool was closing soon but we enjoyed every minute we could before we were kicked out. It was so nice, we decided to take our blanket to the park next door to hang out. We met a couple that was travelling for their daughter’s tennis tournament and they gave us watermelon. Delicious.   We were looking for campsites around San Diego. They were expensive. Dispersed camping was very far outside of the city. We found a regional park website; the Tijuana Rive...

We finally decided to move to our last destination before the sun set. The Arch Rock Nature trail was next. We reached the parking lot and saw the rocks in the distance, we were debating what we wanted to do. We just started moving and once we did, we found ourselves racing down the trail to the rocks. The kids wanted to play monster and once they started running, everyone else was running as well. We had another poo-mergency with no restroom in sight, the evidence is buried in the desert. There was more climbing on the rocks. We took pictures of the sun setting and took a quick look at the Arch rock before starting back to the car.  Gen was behind the wheel, an hour later we were leaving the park’s south entrance. We stopped at the Ranger station to freshen up in the bathroom and fill our water bottles before heading to our campsite. Luckily, the site was the overflow campsite for the park so was minutes from the outside of the park....

The last two spots were advertised as viewpoints. We thought we were done hiking; little did we know we were just warming up. We didn’t even stop at the Skull Rock that named the next viewpoint. We just started climbing on rocks and exploring. The kids took turn leading the crew up, around and between boulders. There were so many things to explore. It was a tremendous amount of fun. The kids would find passages that the adults couldn’t fit through. 

Saturday, May 28th – Joshua Tree National Park - North to Joshua Tree National Park - South, California– Day 107 Our campsite was a large open dirt area with some scrub around the outside. In the dark we had managed to park beside the pile of horse poo and shaving. Horses were allowed in this site. Gen stepped in the middle of a pile.   The Joshua Tree National Park visitor centre was a five-minute drive away. The town of Joshua Tree was packed with college age millennials communing with nature. There was a market with kombucha, organic greens and a few small tortoises. It was all very pleasant but very busy. The laundromat was at the edge of the market, I charged the devices and did the laundry. Gen bought some produce from a guy loading a truck. I even snuck in to buy some watermelon kombucha.   The drive into the park was ten minutes followed by a ten-minute line to show our pass. A quick stop to fill up our water bottles and we were into the park. Th...

The Hidden Valley trail was marvelous. It was a valley filled with cacti and piles of boulders set between larger rocks. John was a handful for the first little bit, he just wanted to run off the trail and explore. We gave him climbing breaks on random piles of rock along the path. We were going so slow that a one-year-old was making better progress up the trail. The second half of the hike was faster. 

Our last stop was Badwater, the lowest terrestrial point on the planet at 282 feet below sea level. The forecast was hot and windy. We walked down to a salty, flat path and attempted to take some more perspective photos. The kids were co-operating slightly but were constantly thirsty and asking to go back to the car. Eventually, we acquiesced. With a brief stop to look at the site of the Borax processing plant, we headed back to grab the trailer and move towards cooler climes.  Our drive was four hours to Joshua Tree National Park. We started in the Mojave desert and made our way south to the Sonoran desert. Our drive featured a stop for gas paying $7.70 a gallon, Taco Bell for dinner and a very scenic drive past Joshua trees in the Mojave National Preserve. The mountains kept appearing throughout our drive. At one point, there was a giant area of sand dunes at the base of one of the mountains. The sunset over the mountains was quite lovely. We finally reach...

Friday, May 27th – Death Valley National Park to Joshua Tree National Park, California – Day 106  Our alarm was set for 7:30am this morning to get a good start on the day. We ate some Sesame Street cereal and then quickly packed up. Our campsite near Death Valley had hit 29 degrees Celsius by 9am. The Furnace Creek visitor center was a 30-minute drive away. On the way we passed Zabriskie Point and we stopped to walk up a gradual rise to look at the scenery. The temperature was now 34 degrees Celsius before 10am. The mountains and rock formations were beautiful. The kids’ energy was already being depressed by the heat but they were still keen.  On our drive we saw 20 mule canyon, made famous on the box of Borax you may purchase from your local grocery store. This was the place in the early 1900’s where they mined borax, put it on a 20-mule team to bring to a local processing mill and put it on a train out of Death Valley. Gen is a big Borax fan, so we ...

Thursday, May 26th – Las Vegas, Nevada to Death Valley National Park, California – Day 105  At 7am, two men were talking for 10 minutes directly outside our campsite (in fairness, directly in front of the washroom) while their trucks ran. At 8am, the camp workers started power washing the concrete pads. Who washes concrete in the desert? Other than that, I slept well. The kids had a late night the night before, we decided to let them sleep in. Ramen noodles for breakfast; the packs wrapped in plastic (minus most of the flavouring) with additional vegetables thrown in. We slowly got everything cleaned up and put away. They had a drinking water spigot, we filled up all our water bottles.   Camping allowed free access to the Red Rocks National Conservation Area. We headed to the visitor center to get the usual things. The center had a volunteer explaining the difference between turtles and tortoises; one lives in water while the other one sinks and drowns. We received the v...