United States
Joshua Tree
Twisted trees and boulder piles under a night sky with more stars than dark space.
The Joshua trees twist upward from cracked earth, their shaggy arms contorting toward a sky so clear at night that the Milky Way arcs overhead like a second horizon. Monzogranite house-sized boulders sit stacked in improbable piles, warm to the touch after a day of absorbing desert sun. The silence is broken only by the occasional clatter of a rock wren.
Joshua Tree National Park sits where two distinct deserts meet, the higher, cooler Mojave to the west and the lower Colorado to the east, each bringing its own plants and animals into one park. The Joshua trees themselves are not trees at all but towering yuccas of the agave family, once classified as giant lilies; the average one lives around 150 years, some pass 300, and they bloom only when well-timed rainfall follows a crisp winter freeze. More than 8,000 climbing routes and 2,000 boulder problems thread the stacked monzogranite, and the park service itself calls the climbing world-class. On moonless nights the Milky Way arcs unbroken over the boulder fields, and by day the desert asks only that you carry your own water and pay attention.
Solo
The desert demands nothing but your attention. Camping alone at a site surrounded by boulders, cooking over a fire ring, and watching the Milky Way appear is as accessible as true wilderness gets in Southern California.
Friends
The climbing is the draw: more than 8,000 routes and 2,000 boulder problems across every grade, with problems you can walk up to and attempt without ropes. Sharing a campsite, splitting firewood, and working boulders until your fingers give out is the Joshua Tree rhythm.
Family
Car camping among house-sized boulders, short nature trails and rocks made for scrambling make this the rare desert park children adore. Come in the cooler months, when the days are mild enough for small legs.
- Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado, come together inside one park, each with its own plants and animals.
- More than 8,000 climbing routes and 2,000 boulder problems thread the monzogranite; the park service itself calls it a world-class climbing destination.
- A Joshua tree blooms only when well-timed rainfall follows a crisp winter freeze; the average tree lives around 150 years and some pass 300.
- Once classified as a giant lily, the Joshua tree is really a towering yucca of the agave family. See one, and you are almost certainly standing in the Mojave.
Barbecue and live music at Pappy & Harriet's in Pioneertown, the desert roadhouse on the park's western flank.
Made-from-scratch diner comfort food at Crossroads Cafe in downtown Joshua Tree, the climbers' breakfast of record.
Rann of Kutch
India
A salt marsh stretching to the horizon that turns blinding white under the full moon.
Taveuni
Fiji
Stand astride the 180th meridian in rainforest, one foot in today, one in yesterday.
Khao Sok National Park
Thailand
Floating bamboo huts on an emerald lake where gibbons howl through prehistoric mist.
Katpana Desert
Pakistan
Cold sand dunes ripple beneath snow-capped seven-thousanders — a high-altitude desert that defies logic.
Capitol Reef
United States
Pioneer orchards still bearing fruit inside a hundred-mile wrinkle in the Earth's crust.
Crater Lake
United States
The deepest lake in America filling a collapsed volcano in a blue that defies photography.
Hana
United States
Fifty-two miles of switchbacks, bamboo and waterfalls, black sand waiting just before Hāna.
Sedona
United States
Red rock cathedrals rising from the desert where pilgrims come to feel the ground hum.