Joshua Tree National Park - Palm Desert Edition 2.0

Joshua Tree National Park.

Travelling with a baby is definitely a different experience. Lacey is so young right now, she doesn't really care what we do, but our life basically revolves around when she naps. So when you're on holidays, you always have to try to account for baby napping and feeding.

Tom and I decided that we wanted to make a short day trip out to Joshua Tree National Park. Specifically, we wanted to check out Skull Rock, and do a short hike (1.7 mi or about 3km) on the Skull Rock Trail. It was a 1.5 hour drive to the trailhead, and we timed our departure at Lacey's nap time so that she would sleep for at least 40 minutes of the drive out. She did indeed for forty minutes, was okay by herself in the back seat for about 30 minutes. And then started losing her mind for the last 20 minutes, so I sat in the back seat with her and attempted to entertain her. She was not having it. She wanted OUT of her carseat!

Skull Rock Trail.

The landscape in Joshua Tree National Park is pretty interesting! We wound our way through outcropping boulders of granite, cacti, and prickly Joshua trees (featured prominently on the left of the photo above). There were small lizards darting around, and a few birds, but otherwise it was fairly quiet.

Granite hardrock.

Joshua Tree close-up.

Joshua trees are native to California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. According to Wikipedia, they were named by Mormon settlers who felt that the bizarre shapes of the trees reminded them of the Biblical story of Joshua, praying up to the sky. Apparently the trees flower creamy white blossoms from February to April (we were much too late for that). Once they flower, the yuccca moth has a hayday laying eggs and help to spread pollen from the trees.

Tom and Lacey on the trail.

Lacey seemed fairly content in her carrier. She was happy to be with mom and dad, and was quietly taking in the new surroundings. Most importantly, she was happy to be out of her car seat. There was not a cloud in the sky, but because we were at a higher elevation than Palm Desert, it wasn't actually that hot-- maybe around 20 degrees. It was a bit warmer when we finished our walk, but it was a pleasant temperature for a short hike.

Some prickly looking cacti.

Some of the vegetation in the park very unique looking. I'm not sure what the plant featured in the photo above is called, but it looked like it should be growing under the sea, rather than in a desert!

Lacey isn't great at selfies. It probably only took us twelve tries to get the photo above... Most of our previous attempts featured the top of her hat.

And at the very end of the trail, we finally got a look at Skull Rock. It looks pretty skull-like to me! Skull Rock was formed by rainwater accumulated in holes and depressions in the granite. The rainwater eroded the depressions, which allowed more rainwater to accumulate, and the cycle continued until the large eye-socket-like depressions were formed.

It took us about an hour to finish the hike, and when we got back to the car, it was about time for Lacey to have a nap again. She was content to sleep for the first forty minutes of the drive, and was losing her mind by the last twenty minutes.

Tom and I had intended to do a second day trip out to the coast. However, the drive to the coast was about two hours, and given Lacey's displeasure at being in the car seat for 1.5 hours, we decided it would be good if we left that for another time!

But all in all, I call our road trip to Joshua Tree a success!

Adventures in Parenting - Palm Desert Edition 1.0

It's hard to imagine that seven months have gone by since Lacey arrived. Sometimes it still feels surreal that I'm a parent of a seven month old. At what point does it stop feeling new to be a parent, and become second nature?

Tom and I left for Palm Desert on October 2, Lacey's seven month birthday. This was our second flight with Lacey, and I felt just as nervous for this one as I did for the first one. Our first flight with Lacey was only about an hour long, and this one was three hours. A lot can go wrong in three hours!

Thankfully, Lacey handled this flight just as well as the first. Tom managed to get her to fall asleep on him for about an hour.

When she woke up, she went about charming everyone in the seats around us. Everyone was telling us how cute she was, and how she was such a good baby. When she wasn't making friends with our seat neighbours, she was playing with a plastic cup that a flight attendant gave her.

The flight went really well. All of our bags arrived, we picked up our rental car, and headed to the car. And here is where things started to fall apart... We arrived at our hotel before official check-in time, and there were no rooms available early. We had been counting on being able to put Lacey down for a nap immediately, but that wasn't possible. So we decided to drive around to kill some time, and we hoped that driving would lull Lacey to sleep. Instead she had a full-fledged meltdown, and we ended up having to pull over so we could take her out of her car seat and rock her. She eventually fell asleep, but it was a long afternoon!

The following day, we went to the Living Desert, which is a zoo. We stuck to the African exhibit, and wandered around, pointing out sleeping animals (bat-eared foxes, hyenas, warthogs) to Lacey. We're not really sure if she knew what she was looking at (or saw all of them), but she seemed to be having a good time looking around, regardless.

We saw a tortoise. Has anyone else noticed that tortoises are sort of menacing looking? Also, their scaly legs look very dinosaur-esque.

We saw some pretty birds. Possibly some sort of crane? I can't remember.

We tracked down some meerkats. Although there was only one. I guess the other ones were inside sleeping. But the one meerkat was more than happy to pose for me.

But the best part was that I fed a giraffe! We donated five dollars and got some carrot sticks from some volunteers. The giraffes come up and take the carrots right out of your hands! They use their big, long blue tongues to wrap around the carrots and grasp them. It felt sort of sandpapery, like a cat tongue.

Lacey was DEFINITELY very interested in the giraffe!

The giraffe was also an opportunist. Once the carrots were gone, there was no reason to hang around. I took a little too long taking pictures, and it started to wander off, until the volunteers coaxed it back with more carrots.

Here's a shot with the big blue tongue hanging out!

By the time we left the zoo, it was pretty hot, so we grabbed some lunch, got Lacey down for a nap, and  when she woke up, we headed to the pool! I make it sound like this was a breezy event. And in the past when it was just Tom and I, it would have been. But when I say we "headed to the pool", I mean we spent 45 minutes applying sunscreen, diapering Lacey in disposable waterproof diapers, layering her into a reusable swim diaper, struggling to squeeze her into a bathing suit, trying to find her hat, and packing all her crap into a backpack, while she attempted to crawl away, and put up a major fight about getting diapered. So once we "breezed" through that process, we headed to the pool.

This was Lacey's first time in the water, and she was very interested in all the comings and goings of people on the pool deck, as well as splashing around in the water. She has her serious face on, but she enjoyed her first dip in the pool! She had a bit of a reaction to either the chlorine or the sunscreen, so we didn't stay long.

 We knew we'd definitely be back for more pool time!