With its Dr. Seuss-like Joshua trees stretching out across an almost lunar landscape of giant granite boulders and rolling mountains, Joshua Tree National Park is like something out of a children’s story book. It’s not uncommon to hear people using terms like magical or spiritual to describe how they feel about this park. Visitors come here to walk or hike among the trees, climb the towering rock walls, camp under the stars, capture the beauty in photographs, or simply soak up the tranquillity of the desert.

Located where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts meet, the park has a complex landscape, with profoundly different appearances and vegetation depending on the elevation. Some areas are covered with mature Joshua trees as far as the eye can see, and others are completely devoid of these trees but offer their own unique beauty. Well positioned nature paths, hiking trails, and vehicle pull-outs are spread throughout the park, providing easy access to this stunning landscape.

Although the park encompasses some 800,000 acres, most of it is not accessible by road. Two main roads run through the park: Park Boulevard, which runs west to east from Twentynine Palms and the North Entrance to the West Entrance and the town of Joshua Tree; and Pinto Basin Road, which joins up with Park Boulevard and runs south to north from Interstate 10 and the Cottonwood Visitor Center to the North Entrance and the town of Twentynine Palms. Park Boulevard is the main section of the park that is of interest to most visitors, but there are also things to do and see along the north half of Pinto Basin Road.