This week we finally moved on from Joshua Tree NP after staying the limit allowed—two weeks. We’ve only done that in a handful of national parks in 22 months of the Isaiah 6:3 Tour, which is a measure of how much we loved it. While there we had one of the best birding days we’ve ever had at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve adjacent to the park, and right over a fault line that joins the San Andreas fault a few miles away. We saw thirty-some different species and 7 new ones on our third and final day hiking there. It sure helps when you have a savvy guide with sharp eyes and ears.
Then we headed north a hundred miles through the desert on a lonesome, see-forever two-lane road to the Mojave Desert National Preserve and The Hole in the Wall Campground. “Holes in the walls” would be more accurate. It’s called that because the mesa and canyon walls around the campground are perforated with holes that began as gas bubbles in lava that then got exposed by erosion. This morning we hiked through nearby Banshee Canyon, so named because when the wind blows through it the airflow over all those holes in the walls makes a howl like a banshee. It was not a hike for the faint of heart or the 
claustrophobic. In places the canyon walls were less than shoulder-width apart. In other places iron rings were hung from the walls to climb up through the most difficult passages. I’m proud to report this codger and his bride are still capable of such challenges.
The Mojave is high desert (our campsite is 4288 msl) so the nights are in the 40’s and the days in the 60’s or low 70’s—perfect, in my view. The night sky is dazzling in its detail and the Milky Way is mind-boggling. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork (Psalm 19:1). Only the dim glow of Las Vegas lights above the northern horizon, 65 miles away as the night hawk flies, reminds us that there are other humans in the universe in the middle of the night. What a blissful place to spend the springtime after a Colorado winter!
