Episode 39 - Joshua Tree National Park 🏕️
Dylan and I's first time leading a camping trip for the UCLA Excursions Club!
This past quarter at UCLA, I joined the UCLA Excursions as a staff member to lead outdoor camping trips for UCLA students. Awesome!
I had applied to become a staff member for the larger, more well-known UCLA Backpacking Club twice, but was rejected both times. Lit. A couple of fellow rejected people came together and formed their own outdoors club, and I joined along, too!
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
The way that these college outdoors clubs work is that they have 10-20 student trip leads, who partner up to lead a trip each academic quarter. Since this was my first quarter as a trip lead, it was my first time ever leading a college camping trip. Hooray!
I partnered with Dylan to lead my first trip, another Excursions trip lead who I had actually met the previous year on a UCLA Backpacking Club trip (the club I was rejected as a trip lead from) last January that my girlfriend, Brooke, led. What a small world!
Dylan and I looked at a map of SoCal, saw Joshua Tree National Park in the corner of it, and said, “Fuck it, let’s go to Joshua Tree”.
At least that’s how I remember it.
And what happened after was a lot of great mini hikes, the GREATEST CAMPING RICE OF ALL TIME, a desert tortoise sighting, and two extremely stressed out trip leads when we nearly lost one of our group members in the desert.
Here’s how it happened …
Saturday, October 12th, 2024
This trip happened nearly three months ago (October 12-13th, 2024), so the way that this blog post came to be was that I was randomly inspired over winter break, looked through my camera roll, and tried to write down whatever I could from memory. Let’s do this darn thing.
We met Saturday morning on the Hill (the massive dorm complex) at UCLA with our entire group (18 people total, including Dylan and myself), quickly split up into different car groups, and then we were off! For some people on the trip, it was their first time ever visiting a National Park. For others, it was even their first time ever camping. How exciting!
Honestly, I do find it so cool that Dylan and I got to take some people on their first-ever camping trip. What an honor!
The drive to Joshua Tree was three hours long and honestly pretty uneventful, and all the cars met up at the visitor center on the north side of the park. After a few minutes of everyone going, “Oooooh, aaaaaah”, buying souvenirs, and getting their park maps, we were back in the cars and off into the park. Most of the cars had National Parks passes, so we zoomed through the entrance gate in no time at all.
Our first stop of the day was at the Hidden Valley picnic area, where we climbed some rocks, checked out the area for a bit, and had lunch. Dylan and I whipped up some yummy-ass sandwiches in seconds (Dylan’s really good at spreading peanut butter), and based on how great this first lunch was going, I knew that we were going to have the best trip ever.
After our delicious lunch, we packed the cars back up and went on our first hike of the day. We went up into Hidden Valley, which was exactly as the name suggested — a valley that was hidden. Some cattle ranchers used it centuries ago to store their cows in an escape-proof manner, and the entire area was filled with beautiful boulders that were perfect for climbing and photography.
The main group split up into a few smaller subgroups, with each one doing their own thing. We eventually met back up toward the end of the 1-mile loop, where we saw some pro climbers scaling the massive rocks!
Finlay (my Scottish roommate I low-key nepoed onto the trip) also found a pretty epically-shaped stick, which proceeded to entertain him for the next 10 minutes. Based on how excited he was about this stick, you’d think there weren’t any sticks in Scotland!
To be completely fair to Finlay, it was a very epic stick.
After our outing at Hidden Valley, our group packed ourselves back into the cars, and we were off to our next destination. This time, it was the lovely Cholla Cactus Garden, a wonderful botanical paradise of these beautifully-pokey cacti. I had been there two weekends before with some French friends, and it was just as lovely the second time!
Of course, the group walked around the cacti, pictures were taken, and a rock tower was built. What else did you expect at the Cholla Cactus Garden?
After our visit to the cactus garden, we continued south along Pinto Basin road toward the southern boundary of the park, eager to make camp before the sun set and it got dark. We weren’t able to secure any campsites inside the actual park (reservations fill up so fast, and we had a big group), but fortunately, there is free camping on public land to the north and south of the park. Let’s fucking go.
(Side note, but this land is officially owned by BLM, and for the longest time, I thought that Black Lives Matter was investing in wilderness property and couldn’t figure out why. Turns out, BLM in this case stands for Bureau of Land Management. Silly me. 🤦♂️)
The campsite was amazing, and the sunset was absolutely gorgeous. We all set up our tents (for some folks, it was their very first time doing so!), made a campfire, and then Dylan and I got to work. It was time for dinner, and there was some cheffing to do.
And chef it up, we did!
I have never been more proud of a camping dinner I’ve helped cook in my entire life — it was SO delicious (we were also hungry and tired, so our standards were much lower than normal lol). We made tacos, and the perfectly cooked rice dumped onto a “plate” made from a ripped Trader Joe’s bag remains to this day the greatest rice I have ever cooked in my entire life.
That rice. Oh my god. I’m still so fucking proud of that rice!
After dinner, our group packed back into the cars to stargaze and fill up on gas before the long drive tomorrow. Along the way, we drove passed the General Patton Memorial Museum (which was literally in the middle of nowhere), and we continued to laugh about that fact for the next 16 hours. At the gas station, we also grabbed ourselves a rack of beer for the campsite, then headed back!
Back at camp, we sat around the fire for many hours, chatting the night away. The highlight was when Dylan, Finlay, Claire, and I started coming up with different Santa-themed holiday stories, each getting more graphic and explicit than the last. The crowd favorites were one of Santa smut (which I later ended up actually writing for Brooke) and that of a bourgeoisie Santa oppressing his proletariat elves. That one is still in the works, but I haven’t laughed that much in one night in a long, long while. What a lovely time!
Sunday, October 13th
Sunday morning, we all awoke well-rested and in great spirits.
Just kidding!
We made our lovely oatmeal for breakfast quickly, packed up camp, and were on the road in no time at all. We headed back into Joshua Tree and parked for our big hike of the day to the Lost Palms Oasis.
It was quite the ambitious hike: out-and-back, 8 miles round trip, with a good amount of elevation gain. However, we were starting early in the morning, the weather wasn’t forecast to be warm, and we were carrying 8 gallons of water for the entire group of 18. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s called foreshadowing, kids!
The hike started off great, and then things started going downhill at around the 2-mile mark.
One of the girls was severely dehydrated, despite drinking lots of water and electrolyte drinks. We went slowly and thought everything was fine, but then she started throwing up straight water. Uh oh! It doesn’t take a genius to know that’s terrible, but fortunately, Claire volunteered to take her back to her air-conditioned car while we carried on.
Claire. My personal hero. Thank you!
The rest of the group proceeded onward, and then the absolute highlight of the entire trip walked out of a bush: a desert tortoise.
Holy fucking shit.
To me, desert tortoises were a complete myth that was invented to encourage more people to visit the desert. Like the Loch Ness monster. Or Bigfoot.
A turtle? Chilling in the desert? There’s no fucking way!
Yet there it was, right before us. Needless to say, our entire subgroup of hikers was completely blown away, and we stopped to marvel at it for a solid 5 minutes, taking a bunch of photos and videos along the way.
Not only was this the most excited I’ve ever been to see a turtle of any kind, but it was also the highlight of the entire trip for most of the people there.
Including me!
The rest of the hike proceeded great, and we made it to the Lost Palms Oasis at the very end. It was basically a mini valley with large palm trees, just like in the movies. We didn’t spot any water, but we did explore the palms and had a lovely time drinking water and eating goldfish in the shade. We did it! We made it to the end!
The hike back was smooth and uneventful, and everything was going great.
Until it wasn’t. Wonderful.
Two girls in the group went on waaaaaaay ahead of the rest of us and we didn’t know, so we were worried the entire way back that they were lost somewhere and we couldn’t find them. Dylan and I were getting more and more nervous the entire walk back to the parking lot, but when we made it back, they were there, waiting for us in the shade. Thank goodness!
We all piled back up into the cars, eager to get back to the picnic area to eat lunch and go ahead.
And then someone ends the festivities with this crazy phrase: “Hold on, where’s Edwin?”
Bruh. What?
We look around, and Edwin is nowhere to be found. Holy shit. We lost someone in the desert.
Panic mode begins descending upon the group — we look in all the cars for him, but no luck. Talking to everyone else, we realize he went ahead of the group with another person, and then decided to wait for us. The person he was with said she left him along the trail, and now he was lost.
At this point, there’s nothing to do except hike back into the desert and search for him. Dylan and I pick two of the strongest other hikers to join us back onto the trail, we tell everyone to drive back to the picnic area, and we tell them to come back in a hour with the park rangers if we don’t find Edwin by then.
The four of us briskly set off back into the trail, super nervous that Edwin was in a ditch somewhere, dying of thirst. In my mind, I’m already talking to the rangers, explaining how we lost him, and planning his eulogy. Poor Edwin, lost in the desert!
The plan was to walk two miles back into the trail (where he was last confirmed to be), spread out as far as we could while still seeing each other, then slowly walking back to the cars, searching everywhere along the way for him. We turn a trail corner 1/2 mile from the car, and there’s Edwin, walking along the trail, not a care in the world.
We run over to Edwin, doting on him like parents that lost their kids in a park. I don’t think I’ve ever been so thankful to see anyone in my entire life!
Turns out, he took a wrong turn somewhere, realized that, then backtracked to the trail and kept going. By the time he made it back to the trail, the rest of us had already passed him by, carrying on to the cars. Oh my!
We walk back to the car together, arrive at the picnic area, and we all celebrate! In hindsight, we should’ve started the hike with a safety talk about best hiking practices and the buddy system, but I didn’t really think we needed to. Hey, you live and you learn. Hindsight is always 20/20, and we all made it back to UCLA in one piece!
We reminisce on a good trip, head back into the cars, and drive back to UCLA uneventfully. Dylan and I were completely cooked from leading such an epic trip, so the entire drive back to UCLA went something like this:
And so our epic trip to Joshua Tree came to an end. A weekend of fun memories, and we all made it back to UCLA in one piece. That’s all for now folks, see y’all soon!
Best,
Dennis :)
P.S. Dylan and I are leading a backpacking trip on Catalina Island this quarter, and we are SO excited!
This is completely not relevant to Joshua Tree, but the coffee shop I’ve been sitting in writing this blog has the craziest gossipy baristas EVER. The tea that they were spilling while I was sitting there was crazy:
“And damn, she got together with her current husband by cheating on her last one”
“Damn bro you really be judging girls off their coffee orders like that”
“We can do a pretty mediocre job because there aren’t that many coffee shops around”
“And I was like, "Dude respect, what we doing’”
“And I just can’t STAND these morning workout people”
Their lattes are super yummy, too!
Some more pictures:
