Jan 8th - Dates & Joshua Tree Nat'l Park

This morning we went to the local (actually it is around 15 miles from us) Sam's Club because there was an RV show there. We thought that there might be someone there who sold RV awnings. The awning on one of our slide outs is in desperate need of replacement. Also, our main awning needs to be replaced in the near future. We had no success because the show was all about selling new and used RV's. We did do some shopping at Sam's so it wasn't a total loss.

On the way back we took a different route and saw signs for Sam Cobb Farms. They have dates. We got to meet Mr. Cobb and had a very enjoyable time with him. We taste tested several different varieties of dates and ended up purchasing three different kinds. I had no idea that dates could taste so different. The variety that I liked best was developed by Mr. Cobb. It takes 7 years from the time you start a date palm before you harvest your first crop of dates; 7 years and a lot of work. Below is a photo I took of Mr. Cobb and the address of their web site. The photo section will give you a better idea of how dates are grown. I urge you to order some dates from them.
http://www.samcobbfarms.com/

In the afternoon we headed to Joshua Tree National Park. On the way we stopped at Willieboys for lunch. It was an interesting place with decent food. Unfortunately we were a day late for the Patsy Cline tribute.

Our drive through Joshua Tree National Park was great. We entered at the West entrance, which is near the top left in the map below. We exited on the south side, which is near the middle at the bottom of the map.

We travelled about 50 miles driving across the park. The high in Desert Hot Springs was in the mid 70's. Up at Keys View, elevation 5,185', the temperature was 46 and the wind was blowing like a banshee. I'm not sure how long I was out looking around while up there, 10-15 minutes, but I know that my fingers were starting to hurt from the cold.

We took a few photos with Kathy's camera, I left mine in the car when we walked up to the observation area. If I can get them off her camera, and if they are decent, I will include one or more tomorrow. We could see a LONG way. One of the sights of interest was a portion of the San Andreas fault line.

During the trip we saw many changes in the type of vegetation, I suppose due to both elevation change and differing amounts of rainfall. The type of rocks/formations also changed dramatically as we drove through the area.

We arrived back at the RV around 6 PM. I kicked back and relaxed while Kathy did multiple loads of laundry. We can't get any TV channels with only our antenna so we watched a couple of old Bones episodes on Netflix; using my laptop tethered to my phone, no WiFi either.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.