JT Visit With Ms. Blue Eyes And Boy

I'm a few weeks behind in posting, but I'll get caught up this week. These pictures are from a weekend in September in which me, Ms. Blue Eyes and her son visited Joshua Tree National Park. We arrived late afternoon after a pleasant drive that saw us stopping at Steak 'n Shake in Yucca Valley for an early dinner. We had more great conversation while we talked (we all share some political views, chiefly our hatred of Trump) and when we were done, we made our way to the northeast entrance in Twentynine Palms.

Since we were limited in time, we decided to hit a few of the big touristy spots in the park. Since it was summer time and hot as hell, we knew the park wouldn't be packed so making progress through the park would be easy. Our first stop was at Skull Rock and Boy clearlyl found it interesting. We continued on and drove through a dense Joshua tree forest and pulled over at a popular spot that I call "the savanna," because it looks an African savanna: fairly flat with long, yellow grass punctuated by hundreds of Joshua trees of all size. We walked around for 15 minutes or so and I got a picture of Ms. Blue Eyes and Boy standing by the Joshua tree that you see here. We got in the car and continued through the park.

Our next stop was Ryan Ranch and I think that this was the best stop. Boy was clearly impressed and as he walked around the grounds and climbed rocks, I set up my camera and photographed the homestead. We spent 30 minutes here before leaving for our final destination, which was Keys View, the highest point in the park. It was dark by this time and soon after getting out of the car, we could see Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley all lit up and spread out before us. We marveled at the scene for about 20 minutes and then departed the park, driving west to exit through the Joshua Tree exit.

Just like when we drove to the park, we continued to have great discussions on the way back, talking about any and everything along the way. Her son is so bright and I've told her before, I'd wished he was mine the moment I saw him. I'm going to be a great father to our eight kids in the next life.