2 days in Joshua tree

Joshua Tree, the land of #Coachella and Doctor Seuss. And it truly is. If you’re looking for a quick weekend getaway or are spending just 2 days (more or less) in Joshua Tree, then you should find this really helpful! We spent two days in Joshua Tree and covered a ton of ground.

Since I live in San Diego, it was a short 2.5 hour drive to get to Joshua Tree National Park. I’ve wanted to go to Joshua tree for years now so I’m excited to finally be writing a blog post + trip review about it!

First off let’s chat campgrounds. There are two different types of camp grounds to choose from. There’s first come first serve and there’s reservation campgrounds. The first come first serve campgrounds are really cool but they fill up FAST…and I mean fast. So I personally would reserve a campground in the future had I known this.

If you decide to go on a whim or choose to not make a reservation and find that all the campgrounds are full (which happened to us),  hipcamp.com has a ton of different campgrounds you can reserve outside of the park. We stayed at SunFair Park campground which was actually perfect. We had our own fire pit, there was plenty of room between camping parties, which is huge for me because I am a #snob about my personal space. Like, I don’t want you on top of me and I don’t want to hear you have a conversation. 

SunFair Park campground had a property manager named Mark who was insanely accommodating. The property had 36 acres and what seemed like hundreds of campsites to choose from and he drove around with us to make sure we found one we loved.

One thing to note about getting a campground outside the park is that you will be driving in and out of the park at least once a day and that alone can be a 20 minute drive to get to the park. 

Hikes Inside the park:

Sunrise hikes:

Cholla Cactus Garden

Ryan Mountain

Day Hikes:

Hidden Valley Trail

Mine trails – these are really cool if you enjoy history. It’s crazy to me that there’s mines from the 1800’s still left untouched in the park.

Arch Rock

Sunset Hikes:

Ryan Mountain (same as above). We personally did sunset but I would imagine sunrise would be just as gorgeous as the above and on the other side of the mountains!

Keys View