“Yeah, Desert Sky - Dream beneath the Desert Sky”
A drive through Joshua Tree National Park might take a couple hours, viewing the park from the road. An exploration of the park would take a lifetime. Joshua Tree National Park has over 550,000 acres of wilderness filled with a variety of plants and animals that make their home in this land shaped by strong winds, unpredictable torrents of rain, and climatic extremes. Every now and then, man intrudes in this wilderness and leaves his brief, passing mark among the surreal geologic features that cover the landscape. Let’s go see what we can find.
There are a lot of big rocks in what the climbing community refers to as the "Lost Horse" area, and most have very unusual names. If you like rocks, this is a great place to spend some time. The main parking area for this location is signed "Hemingway," after one of the more notable chunks of quartz monzonite that stands nearby.
Read MoreMy first visit to Joshua Tree National Park must have been in the late '60s, (that's 1960s, not 1860s). Friends of my parents took me camping and we stayed at Jumbo Rocks campground. I think what fascinated me about the Monument then and which still does in the Park today, is the same thing which drew in over 1.6 million visitors to the park last year. The Rocks. Put simply, the rocks rock.
Read MoreIt was Thanksgiving weekend and I was in the area, what better time to visit Turkey Flats? It had been on my list of places to check out, along with the Sand Dune, for quite a while and the timing was perfect, as was the weather. I pulled into the parking area at the Pinto Mountain Backcountry Board and decided to check out the information signs before heading out into the desert.
Read MoreI take a lot of pictures, as you Cali49ers have obviously discovered. Writing these posts and sharing photos of places I've visited is almost as fun as the adventure itself. I am currently shooting with a Nikon D7000 and my favorite lens is a Nikkor 18-200 zoom. I think it takes pretty good pictures overall, as long as I keep the sensor clean (it's amazing the amount of dust that can enter a camera body while changing lenses).
Read MoreTrails in the desert can twist and turn, disappear altogether, or branch off into unknown paths. No two directions are ever the same and often the journey is more memorable than the destination. And sometimes the journey and the destination meld into a fine adventure, in a desert synergy that seems to happen to me very often in J Tree. Such was the case on the 4th of July.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
