The story of my trip to Joshua Tree this spring is being told in a very disjointed fashion on this blog. I’ve given you a tiny preview that didn’t show the park at all, and an image from a Wal-Mart parking lot. Now I’m going to show you a handful of images from the drive home, none of which are from inside the park itself.

Behind the scenes, of course, the photos from that journey are being made into a fabulous multimedia production. Which you will be able to acquire, if you want it, eventually.

Most of the pictures below were taken from inside a moving RV, so any smears or splotches you see are probably bug guts on the windows. The top picture is from the end of our first restaurant meal after we emerged from the park. This was at a Thai restaurant in the town of Joshua Tree. After spending five days in a windy desert, it felt very strange to eat in a restaurant.

Which one of these fortunes do you think I got? You can post your guesses in the comments. The first person to get it right wins a copy of the Joshua Tree trip dvd when I’m done with it. Which will be soon, I promise!

As some of you may know, many Wal-Marts will let you park your RV overnight for no charge. You are also free to purchase their wares as you trek through their store on the way to and from their bathrooms.

Alyssa and Bev and I spent a night in the parking lot of the Bakersfield Wal-Mart on our way to Joshua Tree. Bev is a seasoned RV traveler (we were riding in her Lazy Daze) and is not put off by camping in a parking lot. Alyssa and I, on the other hand, were excited about the prospect of Joshua Tree and not thrilled about the landscape offered by Wal-Mart.

But every day of this trip was special in some way, and our minds were blown even at Wal-Mart by the beauty of the biggest double rainbow I have ever seen in my life. This photograph, taken with a wide-angle lens from the window of the Lazy Daze, only hints at its magnificence.