Skull Rock Trail is one of the most popular hiking trail within Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Its popularity is due to the fact that there is a rock that is shaped like a human skull. The Skull Rock Trail itself is about 2 miles long. The trail is located near the center of Joshua Tree National Park and just beside the Jumbo Rock camp site. To hike on this trail, it would be the best to park the car on the side of the road since the camp site parking space is for people who reserved the camp site.
We got to the trail head at around 12:30PM and parked the car on the side of the road. We did not see many people hiking on this trail however. Most people were off the trail and wondering around on the rocks on the side. Since Skull Rock Trail is a loop, we actually started the trail from within the Jumbo Rock camp site.
While we were hiking on the trail, we heard that there is also a rock that looks like an elephant. We thought we found the "Elephant Rock", but we realized that we found the wrong one after we went home and searched it on web. So make sure you find the correct Elephant Rock! The trail is split into 2 parts by the Park road. As we approach the Park road, we started to encounter more people and this is because we were getting close to Skull Rock! Once we got to the Skull Rock, we were a bit disappointed. The rock itself does indeed look like a skull, but it isn't a full skull.
As we started to loop back to where we start, there were less and less people on the trail. The scenario on the trail were amazing however. Seeing the amazing rock formation from afar is just an amazing view. It really felt like we were in the Wild West.
If you are only interested in seeing the Skull Rock, there is no need to hike the trail. You can simply just drive your car up onto the road and stop at the Skull Rock.
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