This morning we packed up after our overnight in Indio (sad to leave the Best Western in Indio – it had free movies on DVD, which meant that we were up till midnight watching them!) and headed to Joshua National Park. It was a nice drive, but after a while desert gets a bit monotonous. Anyway, this desert was broken up by lots of Joshua trees, like the one on the left, and a few glimpses of wildlife. We saw birds, butterflies, about a million dead bees, lizards and a coyote.

Oh, and quite a few Joshua trees and other cactii. From the viewpoint in the park, we could just make out the San Andreas fault through the haze. Although Charlotte didn’t really get gripped, I was excited because I’ve got an O-level in Geology, so I know about these things 😉

Anyway, after that we headed through flash-flood city (Yucca Valley, population 3 1/2) as they were pushing all of the mud off the Interstate, and across the desert to the lovely town of Barstow (not!). The drive was very monotonous, broken up by comedy moments like the picture above. Fasten to a post in the middle of nowheresville, desert, was this sign saying “We are a Neighborhood Watch Area”. Sure, there was a dirt path next to it that probably led somewhere, but when you’re 100 miles from civilisation, is it really going to make a difference to put up a sign?

We also passed lots of these by the road – postboxes for mail deliveries. Although they are all over the place, we thought we ought to photograph them, as they make part of the trip.

And this is the picture that probably represents our drives across America (and Canada) best. It’s the “Roadtrip Soundtrack”, as performed by Charlotte and Emily every 20 minutes. There are 2 lyrics, one goes “Are we there yet”, with a chorus of “When are we there”, and the other track goes “I need the toilet”, with a chorus of “Oh no I don’t” when the car has stopped.

The girls are amazing – they are getting used to being locked in the car for hours, and today the highpoint was the following conversation after 6 hours in the car:

Charlotte: “When are we there?”

Dad: “About an hour”

Charlotte: “Is that all? Great”

Wow!