A couple weeks ago I wrote about a backpacking trip that didn’t happen. I don’t particularly care for cold weather, especially since I have easy access to warm weather hiking in the desert. If I am going to take a trip in cold weather with the obligatory warm (and heavier gear), then I figure I might as well do it in the snow. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much snow in California the past couple of years. Last year I even headed up to the Sierras for snow, since the local mountains didn’t have much, and I struck out on that trip too.

After spending two weeks this month in sub-freezing weather (a week in Panama City, Florida and a week in Columbia, South Carolina) I decided to finally spend a few days in some really nice weather with Joyce and Corky. Daytime highs in the 70’s and nighttime lows in the high 40’s (F).

Obviously, when you see a Joshua Tree then you know you are in the Mojave Desert; it is the indicator plant. And that is where we were.

With all this camping almost every week the past 6 months, you may wonder what we do all day.

Corky likes to sit outside and think about whatever dogs think about.

At night he likes to enjoy a treat.

And of course, he likes to go on hikes with us.

Joyce and I spend a lot of time talking, just thinking our own thoughts, cooking, drink a little wine, go for hikes, and whatever else strikes our fancy. We share time together and have our own time to ourselves.

Usually we are outdoors most of the time, and when not hiking we hang out at our campsite. If it is too sunny we sit under our awning, if it is raining and not too cold we sit under our awning, and if it gets too cold or windy we can go inside the camper. Every trip is different. Sometimes we mostly hike, sometimes we mostly sit outside, and sometimes in really bad weather we play Scrabble indoors — but bad weather is not the norm.

This trip we did some hiking and mostly sat around and talked. Also each day, while Joyce was reading a book, I went looking at rocks. Big rocks. I think they are probably not rocks but boulders.

There were so many, I just spent hours walking around and looking. Looking up at rocks, climbing up rocks and looking down, looking under, around and through rocks.

I also watched other people climb the rocks behind our campsite.

And then, I visited more rocks.

And in between looking at the rocks, I saw a few plants and some nice sunsets.

This useful avocation eats up time quickly — and with any camping trip, the end comes all too soon.

Overall another great camping trip.