What I Found - Joshua Tree National Park
/With a few hours to spare on a Sunday morning, I headed out to JTree to wander about and see what I could find. And as it turned out, the hiking and finding gods were with me.
Read MoreA 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.
With a few hours to spare on a Sunday morning, I headed out to JTree to wander about and see what I could find. And as it turned out, the hiking and finding gods were with me.
Read MoreThe weather was perfect, the air was crisp and clean, my parking spot was open and the desert sand was scrunchy. Gathering my possibles, I set out to see what I could find on the way to Samuelson's Rocks.
Read MoreThe first thing I noticed was, how green was the valley. The substantial amount of rain this past winter has really changed the look of JTree. Two months from now, this picture will look a lot different. The second thing I noticed was, lots of colorful splashes along the way, partly responsible for tuning a 3-mile hike into a 5-mile hike.
Read MoreWhether you call it the Ohlson House, the Wonderland Ranch or Uncle Willie's Health Food Store, the pink ruins near the Wall Street Mill trail are certainly photogenic and definitely enigmatic. They cause me to wonder many things and take many pictures, ask many questions but find few answers. Which makes me return again and again to see what I can find. This is another of my favorite spots in J Tree.
Read MoreIt’s always fun to try to find a lesser-known spot in J Tree, one without much information to guide you. There are a lot of such places, off the beaten path with little or no “popular” appeal to the casual visitor. So they remain out of the guide books, they remain unmarked on park maps, they simply remain, until the desert claims all traces of what once was there. I like these places.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.