For the next few days I am on an adventure in Joshua Tree National Park as part of trip sponsored in part by Mazda. You can follow along with my adventure with the hashtag of #DrivingMatters. We were also sponsored by Napoleon Grills and Hormel Foods with Support from DriveShop and Men Who Blog. You can see my other adventurers over at the Mazda #DrivingMatters Exploring The Desert page.

I took off from Boston on the early morning flight to Dallas and then on to Palm Springs California. The flights weren’t too bad and I was able to play my new LEGO Avengers game on the Nintendo 3DS. I was leaving on the day that Marvel Battlegrounds was going to come out so I would have some withdrawals. So, the time passed quickly and I even watched the Tim Burton Batman movie on the entertainment units on my first, and most modern plane. All the rest were still pretty old without many amenities. But I was excited so I didn’t quite care, I just wanted to get to Palm Springs to get the adventure started.

I landed in Palm Springs, which as a beautiful little airport. Part of it is open air, too. I was picked up by Josh from DriveShop in the Mazda CX-3. We had a great conversation the whole way to the campground. We did make a pit stop in Walmart so that we could get additional supplies for the campsite. While we were there we picked through the Hot Wheels and I found some of the remaining Hot Wheels Hot Trucks series that I had been collecting. I show those in today’s vlog.

We got to the Campsite and most people were there or arrived soon after. All of the equipment was laid out for us and I picked my tent, sleeping bag and a cot to sleep on. We had been given the choice of cot or sleeping pad. Cot was the way to go. the tent popped right up and all I had to do was stake it down. Super easy and it was a four person tent so it was extra roomy for me. I of course, being me, had to unpack everything and get resettled before I got out and joined the rest of the group. We took a look around the campsite, which was a very nice one.

I climbed up onto the rocks right next to my tent and took a photo of Mike’s tent. He had the primo spot all on his own with the high rocks right behind him and low rocks on the other side. Be pretty much had his own little valley hideaway. Mike would be my driving partner for the rest of our time in the park and beyond. While I wandered around and climbed up the rocks dinner was being cooked by James and Heather, our hosts for the trip. They made a great spread of Farmer John hot dogs wrapped in bacon, Hormel Chili and more. I was starving so I had a couple of those hot dogs.

While I was wandering I took one of the toys that I brought with me to get some fun shots. I had a matchbox car that was an off-roading vehicle and shot this image.

I had to get a legendary photo for a post that was scheduled to go up on Thursday so I climbed up as high as I was comfortable onto the rocks beside the camp site. I took my tripod with me and took a bunch of photos from those rocks looking out across the park. I liked this one of myself.

With dinner picked up we gathered around the fire as the temperature of the desert dropped. I was sort of surprised at how cold it got. I was burning up when I arrived but once I changed into shorts I changed back within the hour. Gathering around the campfire was fun and warm. I stayed close but not in the circle the whole time because I wanted to take some sunset shots and also set up my tripod for some night shots.

Around eight O’clock we received a visit from Darryl from Coyote Telescope. He came out to show us many of the stars in the sky (there were so many, it was amazing to see) some planets and also the moon. In between taking turns looking through the telescope I took night shots including the Photo of the day above. But then when he put on the higher magnification eyepiece to view the moon I took this photo with my cell phone.

After Darryl left we stayed up for a little bit but I was fading so I got into my tent and tried to drift off to sleep. I must have gotten some deep sleep very quickly because the next thing I knew I thought it was 6am and I was up and awake. My phone said 5 or 6 (I cannot remember). I got out of my tent and walked by James and Heather, said good morning to them and then set up my tripod and camera to try and capture the sunrise. Except, it was actually 3am and I was all out of sorts with the time. I did manage to shoot this image of the campsite across the way and teir fire dancing on the rocks.

I went back to bed and was awakened to the sound of my name at 8am the next morning. I missed the sunrise that time. But their would be other opportunities.