“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.
Having explored many regions of the park over the past few decades, I thought I'd put this post together about some of my favorite sites and sights. Narrowing it down to only 101 was challenging....
Read MorePut the Desert Queen Ranch, aka Keys Ranch, on your list of things to see on your next visit to Joshua Tree National Park. It's a glimpse back in time to a hardier era, and into the mind of one of the area's most notable early-day settlers, Bill Keys. The Ranch is only accessible via Ranger-guided tours, and generally only on the weekends. Check in at any of the visitor centers located at the park entrances to make a reservation.
Read MoreI recently had the good fortune to spend parts of several days at Joshua Tree National Park. Without any firm destination in mind, or extensive hikes planned, I used my park hopper pass to hop around the park. An annual pass to JTree is a sound investment.
Read MoreLet's face it. Some of the rocks in Joshua Tree National Park are creepy. Many have fearsome names that arouse feelings of dread, terror and foreboding (Skull Rock, the Hall of Horrors, the Old Woman). And I'm sure we can all agree that many are bloodthirsty, lying in wait for the unwary to make one false step. Knowing this, I still pulled into a turnout on Park Blvd. and headed into Spooky Hollow to see what I could find.
Read MoreA mid-day drive along an empty Pinto Basin Road, heat waves shimmering in the distance, the unforgiving desert seeming to grasp at both sides of the two-lane blacktop. It was like driving through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of sand. I was on a journey, a journey into a wondrous land. Then I saw the signpost up ahead and knew my next stop was Porcupine Wash. It was time to see the porcupine. This is what happened:
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
