Joshua Tree National Park

 The final morning of our California road trip was spent at a new national park. The day started out cloudy and cool, which was unusual and much appreciated:

We did a few short hikes and stopped for pictures where it looked cool:

This is the highest point in the park, that you can drive to:

And here is a small slot canyon that isn't on the park brochures but we saw it online and had to check it out. It was cool:

We left the canyon through this little hole that we had to squeeze through on our hands and knees:

As we exited, we noticed that if he had just backtracked it would have been really quick and easy. Oh well. It was an experience.

More tree pictures:

This skull rock is right off the road:

On the way home we drove through a freak thunderstorm in Cedar City. Our windshield wipers were on full blast:

Then the rest of the way home was fine, and we had a nice sunset:

It was a fun trip. Thanks for being fun travelers.

Love,

Mom

Cali, Days 3 and 4

 Day 3

We started the day off with a walk along the coast at a place called Sunset Cliffs. We walked down some stairs to this cool cove and tide pools:

We were trying to find Smuggler's Cove, which I could see on Google maps. It led us here and we had to adventurously climb down the cliff to the beach area:

Found the cove and even though it was low tide, it wasn't a very low low tide, so we didn't enter the cove: 

It was a pretty spot:

I liked walking past the pretty houses right by the beach:

Then it was beach time! We found a spot on Coronado Island:

We then changed and made our way to the San Diego temple for the open house:

It was a long line, but waiting an hour for the shuttle bus both directions was the worst part. We made it in and it is a very cool temple:

The next day, we packed up and left our Airbnb:

We spent the morning at the San Diego Zoo:

We were really hoping to see sifaka lemurs, for TJ. They weren't there!! They were fairly recently moved to another zoo because they were sick at this zoo. We did see other lemurs though:

and pandas and penguins!

We then headed to Coachella Valley for our last hotel stay. It was soooo hot. The pool felt nice: