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Are you planning a visit to the Joshua Tree? Joshua Tree National Park is a perfect weekend getaway place where you can enjoy beautiful desert scenery and kids can run around searching for lizards, hike easy trails, climb rocks and sit around a camp fire, making marshmallow and s’mores and playing outdoor games. It is also a good opportunity to teach them the desert ecosystems and learn about wildlife and plants that grow in Joshua Tree.
Joshua Tree is massive; approximately 790,000 acres, bigger than the size of Rhode Island. (Joshua Tree Guide) It consists of two distinctly different deserts, high Mojave Desert and low Colorado Desert, part of a larger desert named the Sonoran Desert. (National Park Service)
One Day in Joshua Tree
Do you have just one day to explore Joshua Tree? Well-planned Journey by Julia Jennings shared a few tips and highlights you won’t want to miss if you have just one day to see amazing Joshua Tree. She recommends visiting Joshua Tree in late Fall or early Spring when temperatures stay between 40 and 70 degrees.
- Sunrise at Cholla Cactus Garden
- Exploring Arch Rock and Skull Rock
- Hiking Ryan Mountain or Hidden Valley
- Sunset at Keys View
Our Visit to the Joshua Tree
This Spring, our family went on one-day camping trip to the Joshua Tree, and we had such a great fun. We just enjoyed running around vast desert and rock-climbing. After coming back, I created this resource for kids to remember their trip to the Joshua Tree and to learn more about the desert wildlife and plants that they do not get to know often. Kids remember the best when they have experienced it and are taught lessons that are linked to their experiences. They are so much engaged that way.
When our family visited Joshua Tree, we first stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden. To our surprise, teddybear cholla were in full bloom. It was beautiful to see so many teddybear cholla throughout the whole trails, an easy trail that kids can loop around. We also noticed how teddybear cholla looked inside. It was like well woven basket that supported cholla. I also had the honor of getting the spines on my pants, and I felt the spikes until I removed the last one.
After exploring Arch Rock and Skull Rock, our family visited Key’s View with an amazing landscape that set before our eyes.
Joshua Tree National Park Notebooking Journal and Bingo Game
Joshua Tree National Park Notebooking Journal and Bingo Game consists of fact file sheet, map work, wildlife and plants notebooking journal pages and a bingo game. For the bingo game, you can play up to six players. It is best if you can bring the bingo game on card-stock papers and laminate them. But if you do not have card-stock papers, it is okay to just laminate them as well. When our kids played them, it was so amazing to see them know so many desert animals and plants that they can be overlooked.
It can be used together with the book, “Explore! America’s National Parks” by Usborne.”
If you want to preserve memory of your visit, you can purchase national park passport in the visitor center where you can get a free ink Passport cancellation stamp to capture the date and location of your visit as a keepsake.
Another way to enjoy the national park for kids is to get a junior ranger scavenger hunt from the visitor center. You can get a junior ranger badge and be a junior ranger for Joshua Tree!
Reference:
Joshua Tree Guide
National Park Services