Joshua Tree is a park of surpassing beauty, but two factors made my Big Wheel Jeep tour of it exceptional. The first is that rather than entering the park through the main western entrance, which probably would have been quite crowded, our ingress was at a remote area in the southern part of the park. To get to that point, and then to continue on inside the park, we had to drive over extremely bumpy roads that most vehicles aren't even capable of handling. The jolty ride (which I found sort of fun anyway) was well worth it. I saw very few other vehicles, and while my guide and I were wandering among the park's namesake trees I saw no other people at all, and the scene was so incredibly quiet. It felt like we had the 790,636-acre national park all to ourselves! That made for a priceless experience.
The second great aspect of my tour was my guide, Colin. He was quite knowledgeable about the park and the surrounding area; and he was amiable and interesting to talk to. He was also skillful at taking photos of me that were suitable for becoming a social media profile pic. Also, he tailored the tour to my preferences; for example, he knew that in addition to Joshua trees I wanted to see cholla cacti, and he made sure to point those out at every opportunity and give me chances to photograph them.
In addition, Big Wheel was very responsive in communications, and provided excellent customer service, in connection with my tour.
Overall, I feel that Big Wheel Tours provided me with the best possible experience for a half-day tour of Joshua Tree National Park. It exceeded my expectations, even though those expectations were quite high going in.