Scenic pullout · Joshua Tree National Park
A broad basin view with dark skies worth staying for.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Joshua Tree Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Joshua Tree National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Joshua Tree audio tourRecorded for this place
Pinto Basin: A Wetter Past“Up ahead is Pinto Basin Pullout, where sand and low shrubs stretch toward the distant mountains. It's worth a pause if you enjoy seeing the shape of the landscape without taking a walk.”
Plays as you drive up to Pinto Basin Pullout in the Parkwolf Joshua Tree Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
Pinto Basin Pullout is a paved roadside stop on the east side of Pinto Basin Road, with marked spaces parallel to the road. From here, the basin opens into sand, low shrubs and scattered rock piles, with mountains along the far edge. It is an easy way to take in the scale of this part of the park without setting out on a hike.
This landscape was once wetter, with lakes, swamps and grasslands. Today the basin is much drier, but it still supports desert wildlife including sidewinders, jackrabbits and Mojave fringe-toed lizards. They are part of the habitat here, not a guaranteed sighting from the pullout.
For a photo, keep a few foreground rocks or shrubs in a wide frame; they give the open basin and distant ridges a sense of scale.
The remote Pinto Basin is also a good place for stargazing, with exceptionally dark skies. If you stop to look up at night, stay alert and remain within 20 feet of your vehicle, as the park advises.
Wildlife
129 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
15 sightingsGolden EagleMost seen around 10 AMSighting map
413 sightingsDesert TortoiseMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
275 sightingsCoyoteMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
47 sightingsBobcatMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
32 sightingsMule DeerMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Joshua Tree. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Keep exploring
Parkwolf’s Joshua Tree ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
