Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

We woke up bright and early to drive from San Diego to Joshua Tree National Park (about a 2 1/2 hour drive). We stopped for breakfast at a popular diner, the C & S Coffee Shop, in Yucca Valley, about 15 minutes outside of the park. Then we proceeded to Joshua Tree Visitor Center, which is technically located outside of the park. The visitor center has bathrooms, park rangers, maps, drinking fountains (fill up your water bottles!), and a gift shop. There are other ‘bathrooms’ located in the park, but they will not be as nice as the ones in the visitor centers. Also, many of them do not have suitable drinking water.

After our quick stop in the Visitor Center, we ran across the street to another gift shop, as we knew we would not be coming back this way. We then covered ourselves in sunscreen and drove to the Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail. One of the first things that caught my attention was a sign located right past the pay station (currently $30/car) which told us to slow down for tarantulas crossing the road. I couldn’t decide if that was one of the funniest signs I’ve ever seen or one of the scariest. In case you are wondering, we did not see any tarantulas on our visit.

On your way to the trail, there will be many opportunities to pull off the side of the road to snap pictures of the unbelievable landscape.

Joshua Tree National Park

I found myself wishing I had known about this park when my children were younger, as they would have been in heaven with all of the rock climbing they could have done. 

Joshua Trees

I was equally amazed and delighted by the strange Joshua Trees as I was by the bizarre mountains that looked like massive piles of rock laying everywhere. We pulled off the road on at least four occasions before we decided that we really needed to get to our first hike, since we had one day and 7 hikes planned.

Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

I took this photo from the parking lot of the trail. I am always struck by trees growing out rocks, where it looks like they have no business growing.

Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

The park is full of the most amazing rock formations we have ever seen. Looking at all of the precariously placed boulders, we did find ourselves thinking this is probably the last place we’d want to be in a major earthquake. It’s hard not to think that, as the San Andreas fault runs alongside the park. In fact, we drove to Keys View later in the day, where you can view the fault.

Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

After my husband gave me the sage advice to run away from the rocks if the ground started moving, I put the visual of me trying to outrun a boulder, like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, out of my mind and thought about Dr. Seuss and his Truffula Trees. With our new Seussical topic of conversation, we thoroughly enjoyed this leisurely, one mile, easy loop trail.

Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

This was my favorite hike of the day. The path was easy to follow, very well maintained, and there was only a slight change in elevation throughout the entire hike. The only wildlife we saw were some small lizards scampering across the ground.

Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail

Not surprisingly, we did see quite a few rock climbers. I still don’t know how he managed to get up there. The park is very popular among rock climbers.

We spent 45 minutes here, as we kept stopping to take pictures. If planning a visit here, I’d give yourself more time to finish a hike than you think you will need. There is so much to see that will make you want to proceed at a leisurely pace. The park has a wide variety of trails of varying lengths and intensities. Since we only had one day and wanted to see as much of the park as possible, we choose all short hikes. It was also 103 degrees on the day we were here, so short hikes served us well in more ways than one. We had a water bottle for each hike and cooled down in the car with the air conditioning while driving to each hike.

Next up for the day was Cap Rock Nature Trail. To see a list of all the trails we hiked click here. As always, wishing you happy travels and fantastic adventures in this thing called life.

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Hidden Valley Picnic Area Trail