Saguaro National Park

Bidding farewell to my family in California, I began the return trip to Texas as 2013 drew to a close. I had grander ambitions than I ended up achieving for the drive home, but that tends to be the case for me on last legs of road trips.

There was one final stop, right on the way, I did not want to miss. Saguaro National Park, home to the greatest concentration of the tall, tubular Saguaro Cacti in the world. Like many other national parks, Saguaro preserves a flora-filled terrain found there alone. It was just the respite from the road I needed to propel me onward to Texas.

I began at the visitor center where I got a rundown on the trails. One of the rangers I spoke with said that to her each of the Saguaros appeared to have a personality.

In the three remaining hours of sunlight, I drove the unpaved scenic loop, parking about a quarter of the way in to hike a decent portion of the Hugh Norris Trail. The trail climbs a red mountainside teeming with Saguaros and runs along a high ridgeline for miles. I only did the mile-long ascent up the mountainside and wandered atop the ridge about a mile or so.

After exploring the stalky environ, I agreed with the ranger that each of the cacti projected a certain attitude or persona. Tired. Observant. Drunk. Excited. Stoic. Pugnacious. A population as diverse as we humans.

I spent New Years eve in Tuscan, Arizona and began the long drive home early the next morning. Most of it was spent powering through the vast flatlands of southern Arizona and New Mexico before hitting Big Bend Country upon passing through El Paso and entering Texas. For almost the entire route from California back to Central Texas, the road is Interstate 10. The Southern Desert Highway.

A few highlights from the drive home immortalized in photos: a New Mexico sunrise, fog over Las Cruces, New Mexico, a sign welcoming drivers to Texas and informing them it is 852 miles across the state, the mountains of Mexico across the Rio Grande in El Paso, the colorful walls of Interstate 10 in El Paso, an immigration checkpoint, the roiling hills of West Texas (it all looks like Big Bend National Park!), and a map at a rest stop showing Texas' seven ecological regions.

Joshua Tree National Park

Last week Monday, I visited Joshua Tree National Park, located just outside the small city of La Quinta where I was spending the holidays with my family. Joshua Tree isn't the most awe-inspiring national park, but it is not without a quirky, arid charm owing to its strange trees, giant rocks, and mile-high elevations. With just a splash more color, its landscape would be straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.

I entered the park from the southeast, speeding through the flat, sweeping Pinto Basin, which makes up most of the eastern half of the park. There wasn't much to see until the road began to climb, out of the empty basin past gardens of spindly ocotillos and fuzzy chollas.

Rising from the barren Colorado into the visually more interesting Mojave desert, the landscape becomes strewn with humongous granite boulders and forests of the eponymous Joshua Trees. The trees were named by Mormon pioneers who thought their uplifted arms resembled the biblical prophet Joshua.

I hiked a few short nature trails, including one past aptly-named Skull Rock, then took in a grand view of the entire Coachella Valley from Keys Point. Mount Jacinto towers at just under 11,000 feet in the background. About halfway between Keys Point and the Mount Jacinto, the San Andreas Fault reaching deep into the earth's crust is visible as a jagged crack at the surface.

Following a packed lunch, I did the steep 3-mile hike to the top of Mount Ryan and back. The trail requires a lot of huffing and puffing but offers views of the strange rockfields from above. Before leaving by way of the west gate, I hiked the loop trail past Barker Dam, where ranchers used to water their thirsty cattle.