Joshua Tree National Park

Today was a cloudy day in the desert - there was one cloud. At home this is a sunny day. The plan was to take an hour long trip to the entrance of Joshua Tree National Park. This is a natural desert environment park. The first section of the park that we stopped at was the Cholla Garden featuring the teddy bear cacti.

They may be teddy bears but don't cuddle these babies. You'll be pulling barbs for some time. It's spring and in a year when there has been sufficient precipitation, there would be desert blooms galore. Because they are into year three of a drought, we didn't see quite the profusion of spring blooms but there were still some remarkable flowers, like these ocotillo.

It was some time into the park before we sighted our first Joshua tree who are members of the yucca family.

When you drive to the highest peak of the park, there is a great view of an uplifted portion of the San Andreas fault, the most major fault line in California, running from north of San Fransisco down to south of Palm Springs. It is the black strata running across the picture.

Our next order of business was lunch. Brenda had packed a fabulous lunch and we found a really great picnic spot in the camping section of the park.

As we continued further into the park we saw some amazing rock formations like "skull rock".

We then headed to the Hidden Valley, which is a box canyon used in the past by cattle rustlers trying to hide their thievery. The rock formations are remarkable and popular for rock climbers.

It should be obvious from previous photos, that this place is one photo op after another. We then drove back to Brenda and Bill's home and had some time for the hot tub before dinner. Brenda made a wonderful curry and we shared photos to finish off another great day.