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Yesterday I tried a new jeep trail out of Joshua Tree, California. This was just a quick one day, one night getaway for me and the kids. I like taking the kids on camping trips. It is probably more enjoyable for me then it is for them. Nevertheless, it is something that I like to do.

I had not been to Joshua Tree since I was a kid Boy Scout. We arrived on Friday night and all of the campsites were full so we ended up pitching tent on someone’s remote property in the outskirts of town near Joshua Tree. Supposedly, there is some remote campground area not far from town; however, we were unable to find it late in the night.

The next morning, we checked out a couple of locations including Jumbo Rocks Campground and one other location. Jumbo Rocks had a nice nature hike to go through. It is hard to keep kids on this little trail as there are some many cool rocks to climb on.

I wanted to try one of the 4-wheel drive roads so after searching the internet, I settled on trying Berdoo Canyon Road. Berdoo Canyon Road shoots off of Geology Tour Road and ends up dropping you off at Dillon Road not too far from Indio. The distance from the begining of Geology Tour Road to Dillon Road is only about 22 miles.

The first portion of the drive was nice. There were some good views of rock formations. I did not think it was as scenic as I was have liked it to be. In fact, the main road of the park that we started out from in the northern section of the park was more scenic than Geology Tour Road. But is was still worth the drive.

Once getting on Berdoo Road, the first portion was pretty mild. It was kind of like driving through a scorched earth laden land with hills in the distance. The quality of the road was fairly mild as well. Up to this point, I think a normal car could have made the drive.

Then we got to the hills. I do not think that there was much of a climb as we were starting out in the high desert. I seem to recall the altimeter having us over the 4000 foot elevation when starting out. At the end, I believe we were at about the 750 foot elevation. Once we got into the hills, the road changed considerably. It became fairly rocky and much trickier to navigate. There were some sections where the clearance was a concern. There were also areas where we were having to dodge some large boulders while making sharp turns. You defineatly needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle. I was driving a Honda Ridgeline and it handled to road just fine. At the end, I was glad I took the road from the direction we took it from. The toughest terrain was on the descent. I could see that this road would have been much more difficult to climb up as opposed to drop down.

Overall, the trip took us about 2 1/2 hours. This did include a 1 hour break where the kids and I got out of the truck and did some climbing and exploring. You are not authorized to camp along the road while in the park. It did not really look like the best place for camping anyways.

While on this trip, we did get to see some interesting animals and other things. We found one turn where there was a fairly large iguana roaming the rocks. I wanted to get a picture of it, but it quickly hid itself from us. A few moments later, I caught a glimpse of what looked like to smaller iguanas that were bright green in color. We also got to watch two different quail roaming around the desert kind of like a roadrunner. While in the park, we saw several thick softball sized cocoons that were completely full of growing catipillers who had not yet left thier nests. Quite interesting.

To me, this was a really good trip. I had been itching to get out of town and hit some jeep trail anywhere. Joshua Tree seemed like as good a place as any that was not too far from where I live. I think my last trip to Death Valley hitting the jeep trails there was better than this particular trail. Neverthless, this was two hours closer to my home. Given that we only had one day available to us, this was probably a good choice.

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