Trek Date: April 3, 2015

Long before modern-day campers began coming to J Tree, olden-day campers lived and traveled through this land. They were the Cahuilla, the Chemehuevi and the Serrano Native Americans. Did they enjoy the desert solitude and jumbo rocks as visitors do today? I'd like to think so.

Throughout the park there is evidence of where camps were made. Bits of broken pottery, bedrock mortars, petroglyphs and pictographs provide proof that people have been in this land for a long time. I always enjoy stumbling across such sites. They take a bit of searching to find, and the Rangers won't tell you where they are. But if you do some research and keep your eyes open while hiking in the park, odds are good that you'll stumble across one yourself. If you do, follow the old adage, "take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints."

The Wonderland of Rocks holds many secrets and is a great place to search for signs from the past. It's also a crazy maze of huge boulders, dead-end canyons, sandy washes, mean pointy sharp blood-thirsty plants and snakes. If you're not careful, it would be easy to get lost in the Wonderland.

I had read about a small pictograph site near Hidden Valley campground and decided to check it out. One of the best things about setting out to search for something in J Tree is that, even if you don't find what you're looking for, you're going to see a lot of interesting stuff anyway. No hike is ever a waste of time. Here are some pictures I took while wandering about.