DESERT WONDERLAND JOSHUA TREE IS AN AREA OF PECULIAR CONTRASTS - AND BLISSFULLY WIDE-OPEN SPACES.

Byline: Eric Noland Travel Editor

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK - Just after sunrise, the Oasis of Mara was bustling, although there wasn't another soul in sight.

A cottontail rabbit bolted from the brush and scampered across the path not 10 feet in front of an early-morning walker. Another rabbit closely followed, perhaps wondering why someone was out walking now, when the nearby national park visitor center wasn't due to open for some time yet. The calls of birds greeted the new day, a concerto improvised by finches, quail, verdin, mourning doves. Far ahead, a coyote suddenly loped out of the undergrowth of the oasis, crossed the path and headed for the barren landscape to the south, pausing only to cast a steely and faintly unnerving glance over its left shoulder at this human intruder.

This is Joshua Tree - a land of surprises, contrasts, paradoxes.

-- At first look, this desert region due east of Los Angeles might seem a desolate, lifeless expanse, but the oasis on its northern border can be a thriving place. It has been sustaining life for centuries and inspired the founding of the adjacent community, Twentynine Palms.

-- The interior of the park might appear uniformly parched and gray, but if you wander up Ryan Mountain trail at this time of year, as we did a few weeks ago, you might find the mountain's crown - and all of its cactus residents - covered with a generous dusting of snow.

-- In another area of the park, at the foot of Queen Mountain, where you'd think there wouldn't be a drop of water to be had, you might come upon a considerable lake backed up behind a crude dam, built in a rocky canyon by cattlemen in the early 1900s.

-- Many visitors are probably stunned to learn that Joshua trees can't be found in about half the park, despite accounting for its name. The park just happens to stretch out along the border of two massive and distinctively different climate zones, the high-elevation Mojave Desert, which spreads north into Nevada and Utah (and accommodates Joshua trees well), and the lower Colorado Desert, which extends south into Mexico (and is habitat for creosote bush, ocotillo, cholla cactus).

At any moment now, Joshua Tree will deliver yet another enigmatic twist. This drab, dry waste is about to burst forth in brilliant color. The park received the novelty of substantial late-winter rains - nearly 2 1/2 inches since the first of the year. That means the likelihood of a glorious wildflower and cactus bloom over the next two months.

``Spring is late this year,'' said Cindy Von Halle, supervisory park ranger at Joshua Tree. ``We expect April to be very beautiful, with a lot of blooms. First will be the little ones, a carpet of belly blooms - you have to get on your belly to see them. Then the cactus will be blooming.''

The wildflowers expected to flourish this year, according to Von Halle, are lupine, purple matt, sand verbena, chia, dune primrose, desert dandelion, woolly daisy and desert mallow. Rangers will be leading wildflower walks.

The flora exhibition varies throughout the park depending on elevation of terrain and types of plants, so there's a strong prospect of seeing something memorable on any spring visit. Five years ago, we lucked into an ocotillo explosion - the tall, spindly plants in the park's southern reaches adorned with numerous tongues of flaming-red blossoms.

Joshua Tree's appeal lies not only in its profound natural complexity, but also in its relative isolation, its vastness and its minimal development.

The park lies midway between San Bernardino and the California-Arizona border, and although Interstate 10 skirts its southern border, no road of consequence runs through it. It's substantial, too - 794,000 acres, about three-fourths of which has been designated wilderness by Congress. You won't find a hotel bed in this park, or a hamburger, or a gallon of gas for sale. Why, only two of its nine campgrounds even have water.

Instead, visitors are sustained on the northern outskirts by an unspectacular string of desert towns along Highway 62: Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, Paradise Valley, Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley.

Inside the park, which logs a modest 1.5 million visitors per year, you'll find a lot of unpaved roads, hiking trails, some desperately weathered asphalt roads - and, if you stray from the tourist concentrations in the northwest corner, some fabulously wide-open spaces.

Joshua Tree's unspoiled state provides a sense of what it must have presented to early inhabitants and travelers. In fact, it's difficult to pass through it without thinking of a party of Mormon pioneers stumbling alongside a wagon in the late 1800s, hallucinating in the unmerciful heat of the high desert. It's said that a treelike yucca plant resembled the biblical patriarch Joshua, who once led the Israelites into the promised land, and was now crooking an arm overhead to beckon them westward. And so a plant - and ultimately a region - got its name.

Shortly after, the Chemehuevi, Serrano and Cahuilla Indians indigenous to the area began to give way to ranchers, farmers, miners, settlers, homesteaders. Today, that wave has diminished, replaced by sightseers, campers, hikers and, especially, rock climbers.

The steep, jumbled outcroppings of high-traction monzogranite boulders in the northern reaches of Joshua Tree National Park are extraordinarily popular with climbers. In fact, names have been assigned to some 84 climbing sites - most of them fanciful: False Moondog Tower, Agent Orange Rock, the Pet Cemetery, Fire Me a Burger Rock. On winter weekends, the rock faces crawl with adventurous folk who are not afflicted with the acrophobia gene.

(A Climbers Coffee is held at 8 a.m. every Sunday at Hidden Valley Campground, with park rangers on hand to discuss regulations and etiquette.)

Many visitors to Joshua Tree are curious about the experiences of earlier settlers and entrepreneurs, and two sites near the Hidden Valley Campground provide a taste of this colorful chapter of the park's history.

Through May (and resuming in October), ranger-led tours of the Desert Queen Ranch are conducted for a $5 fee. The ranch was homesteaded in 1917 by an indefatigable desert rat named Bill Keys, who scratched out a living there until his death in 1969 at age 89.

Here is a story rich with Old West elements. Keys nurtured a family, grew fruits and vegetables, raised animals for meat, drew water from the ground with windmills, milled gold ore, repaired and made equipment at his own forge. He also gunned down a neighbor in a property dispute and did five years in San Quentin in the 1940s.

Many of the ranch buildings still stand - including a small schoolhouse, where local kids were educated in addition to Keys' five.

The tour is offered twice daily, with a third tour on weekends, but during inclement weather the attempt to find out whether it's been canceled can be maddening. The tour is not only shut down on rainy days, but on dry days after a rain, since adobe mud on the site can be slippery. Unfortunately, though, notification of cancellations is fairly hit-and-miss.

On one day, we were told by rangers at the visitor center reception desk that the tour was on, ``but you'd better hurry.'' After driving 22 soggy miles at a brisk clip, we encountered a sign saying the tour was called off. When we inquired later if there was a way of getting more up-to-date information, a ranger gave us a phone number - to the same visitor center reception desk that dispensed the inaccurate information in the first place.

Also, the sign notifying visitors of suspended tours is not posted at the campground on the way to the ranch, or at a subsequent ``T'' in the road, or at the first gate to the ranch. Instead, you're forced to rattle down a washboard dirt road to a second gate, on which the sign is posted.

It's considerably easier to get to Barker Dam, a short distance away. The hike to the dam is an easy, 1.1-mile loop and includes an American Indian petroglyph site (unfortunately defaced with paint long ago). The dam, which blocked up a rocky canyon to create a reservoir, was begun by cattlemen in the early 1900s and augmented by Keys a half-century later.

The efforts of man to harness this harsh environment are interesting enough, but it's every bit as fascinating to delve into Joshua Tree's natural wonders.

One such option is a hike to the top of 5,461-foot Ryan Mountain. It's three miles round trip on a trail that is very well maintained (park service publications rate it as moderately strenuous, but it is not particularly taxing). In the initial ascents, rocks have been positioned in some areas to create the semblance of a stone staircase, making the climb easier. The elevation gain is significant, but the payoff is, too: marvelous views of Queen, Pleasant and Lost Horse valleys.

The scent of pinyon trees accompanied our morning hike, and the late- February snow on the broad summit - drifting to three inches in spots - was a pleasant bonus. A bonnet of fog topped the scene.

Another can't-miss sight is Keys View, a spectacular overlook at the end of a seven-mile stub of road. Here, if the weather cooperates, you can survey the sprawl of the Coachella Valley resort communities far below, as well as the smog vent between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountain ranges.

If you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle, you might also want to tackle the Geology Tour Road. It's a dirt track that juts into Pleasant Valley near Jumbo Rocks Campground, and provides an 18-mile examination of some of the natural forces that carved this park into so many unusual shapes and edifices.

Many visitors, especially those arriving from the population centers of the Los Angeles area, enter Joshua Tree at its northwest entrance, loop through the main tourist area, and exit through the north station. But to do so is to deny yourself a primer on the diversity of this national park.

Instead, head south on Pinto Basin Road toward the Cottonwood area of the park. It's an interminable route that eventually links up with I-10 east of Indio, but it has its own charms.

The road passes through the transition zone between those massive Mojave and Colorado deserts, and the plant life changes entirely as a consequence. Within just a mile or two, the Joshua trees thin out and then vanish entirely, giving way to creosote bush, smoke trees and several varieties of scrubby cactus.

We got out for a short walk at one barren-looking spot and heard the not-so-distant yips and cries of a pack of coyotes. It sounded like dozens of them, perhaps exulting over a kill. They probably posed no threat to us, but we didn't stray far enough to find out.

Sometime later, we reached the Cholla Cactus Garden. Walkways lead through this thick stand of spiny chollas, which reproduce so prolifically that the ground is littered with fresh sproutings, looking like prickly doughnut holes.

The best time to stop here is either late afternoon or early morning, so that the entire garden is lit with low light. The cactus appendages, covered with millions of quills, appear to glow.

Some early travelers dubbed them ``jumping cholla,'' because the needlelike spines stick to you so readily that you're certain the plant can propel them. Others called them ``teddy bear cholla'' because of their fuzzy appearance, but you'll nuzzle them only at extreme peril.

Appears to be one thing. In truth is quite another.

Much like Joshua Tree itself.

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: The north entrance to Joshua Tree National Park, where the comprehensive Oasis Visitor Center is located, is about 150 miles from Los Angeles. The most direct route is Interstate 10 east to Highway 62 north and west, turn right on Utah Trail. There is a $10 fee per vehicle for entrance to the park, good for seven days.

TRAVELER'S ADVISORY: A major road construction project is currently under way at the park. Previously, visitors had to drive through Hidden Valley Campground to get to rock-climbing sites in the Wonderland of Rocks area and to such popular tourist destinations as the Desert Queen Ranch tours and the Barker Dam trail. This created dangers and headaches for campers, so a bypass around the campground is being cut. Expect delays of 15 to 30 minutes on Park Boulevard near the campground. In the slack summer months, there's a chance a stretch of Park Boulevard will be closed entirely on weekdays.

TOURS: Through May, ranger-led tours of the Desert Queen Ranch are conducted daily at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., with an additional tour at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. From June through September, tours will be conducted on weekends at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. (if a minimum of five people make reservations). Daily tours will resume in October. Tours last an hour and a half. It's advisable to make reservations well in advance. Cost is $5 for adults, $2.50 for children ages 6-11. Reservations: [phone].

INFORMATION: Updates on Joshua Tree's spring bloom will be available on the park's automated phone line: [phone]. To speak to a person at the Oasis Visitor Center, call [phone]. Web: www.nps.gov/jotr.

CAPTION(S):

11 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 6 -- color) Although it may look desolate at first glance, Joshua Tree National Park actually is teeming with life. Clockwise from top left, a Mojave mound cactus bursts forth with spring color; the aptly named Jumbo Rocks Campground is a favorite sport with campers and hikers; late-winter rains are expected to produce a generous wildflower bloom, peaking in April and May; the region's namesake Joshua trees extend their oddly angled limbs upward, as if beckoning its amber glow over a Mars-like landscape in the Jumbo Rocks area; a brazen coyote forages for food in the park.

Photos by: Rodrigo Pena/Staff Photographer

Courtesy of National Park Service

(7) Joshua Tree National Park is an area of incredible natural diversity and beauty, as exemplified by these giant outcroppings of rough boulders, ideal for climbing, in the northern part of the park.

Gene Blevins/Special to Great Escapes

(8) This cholla cactus can surveve the desert's extreme weater contrasts - harsh summer heat and cold winter snows.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

(9) Phil and Becky Gruber of Colorado climb in Joshua Tree using climbing bolts that have been at the center of controversy for years. Accomplished rock climbers and amateurs alike enjoy these monzogranite outcroppings.

Andrew Silva/Staff Photographer

(10 -- 11) A coyote, above, tries to bum food off a driver who has pulled to the side of the road in Joshua Tree. Below, dandelions carpet the desert during the spring blooming season.

David Creamer/Staff Photographer

Courtesy of National Park Service

Box: If You Go (see text)