Visiting Joshua Tree National Park in July brought a lot of unexpected experiences. I did a ton of research before my trip and thought I was completely prepared for 3 days hiking the desert, but nothing prepared me for swarming bees, 6-legged wake up calls, or easier-than-expected hiking trails. So, that being said, here are the 5 things I wish I knew before visiting Joshua Tree National Park.
- Over the past couple of years July has been prime honey bee activity season in Joshua Tree National Park. Despite being deathly allergic to bees, this isn’t anything I ever thought to research beforehand. Even if I had, I would have thought summer would be way too hot for the bees. Turns out that they’re more likely to swarm because their usual water sources have dried up.
What does this mean for park visitors?
It means that they will quickly be drawn to any source of water, especially human sweat and all the water let off by your car’s air conditioning. Park rangers recommend turning off your AC 10-15 minutes before arriving at your final destination, but I turned mine off a half hour before reaching Keys View and still had them swarming around my car. Easily one of the most terrifying moments of my solo travel career! - Since summer is the off-season at Joshua Tree National Park, a lot of the local businesses shut down until September.
This could potentially be because I was visiting during a pandemic, but I don’t think so. It seemed like a lot of the businesses do this every year. - The desert = bugs. And not just any bugs, but big bugs. And when it is a million degrees outside, they’re going to be looking to get inside. I got woken up to a gigantic cockroach crawling across my face at 3AM despite my AirBnB seeming spotless when I went to bed. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before the rude awakening, but I certainly wish I had. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so surprised!
- Liquor stores are hard to come by. I realize this makes me sound like a lush, but my only options were the limited selection at Vons Grocery Store and the super high end and equally high priced boutique liquor store in Joshua Tree. All I wanted was a variety pack from a southern California brewery to end my days of hiking through the desert, man!
- Hiking one mile through the desert is not as challenging as hiking one mile up a mountain in Glacier National Park.
Since I was going to be hiking the desert during the summer, I planned on doing hikes two miles or shorter. I thought that the heat would make the hikes a lot harder and that the two mile hikes would take me 2-2.5 hours.
I was wrong, and ended all my hikes within 90 minutes. While each hike was amazing, they were relatively flat which made them a lot easier than I had expected. If I had realized how flat they were I definitely would have done a few longer hikes instead.