we left the windy cold of joshua tree with stinging fingers this morning. the day got much warmer on the road and the drive was bright and sunny, probably in the 70’s. we filled the MSR shower bottle with water and put it on the dash board to heat in the sun for a shower later tonight. we reached our destination, the gilbert ray campground, and setup “camp”. i managed to buy a power adapter from the camp host so i could get power running for all my charging devices. the d200 camera eats batteries and i was glad to get them charging as they were both almost shot. we took a short hike along a trail at night, the moon was almost full. it lit the desert landscape with a soft glow.
the next morning we headed out early to go hiking in the national park. we hiked the king canyon trail. you can see the trails we hiked on this map:
you can also see the gilbert ray campground on there as well. the image below is nancy sitting at the top of wasson peak eating a well deserved orange after a tough climb. it must have been around a 2000 foot elevation gain. you can see the trail winding around the mountain in the background.
ah, it’s the small pleasures in life, right? we drove to the summit that [...]