“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.
Ok, what I want to know is, who came up with the name "Fried Liver" wash and why? Was it some old prospector wandering down the wash, dreaming of his favorite meal? Maybe a rock formation reminded someone of a plate of fried liver? Could a hunter have killed a bighorn sheep in the wash and fried up its liver for a savory snack? These are the kind of things I think about while hiking out in the back country. We may never know the answer.
Read MoreI recently found an old, 1975 edition of the Geology and Man Motor Nature Trail Guide on my bookshelf. I must have bought it back it back in the day, probably on a trip to the Monument with my brother and parents. I can remember traveling along the bumpy road, stopping at the points indicated while someone read the description of what we were looking at. Those were fun trips and as I haven’t done that since, I thought it was time to revisit the Geology Tour Road to see what I could find.
Read MoreI’d read about, and seen pictures of, a large boulder out in the backcountry, near the base of Queen Mountain and decided I wanted to find it. You’re probably thinking, “You’re nuts. There are hundreds, if not thousands of large boulders in Queen Valley. And one looks much the same as another, so what’s the big deal?” That’s a fair question.
Read MoreSamuelson’s Rocks. Chances are good that most visitors to Joshua Tree National Park have never seen them, let alone even know they exist. And of those who do set out to find this elusive and evocative site, many of them never return. Just kidding. But in reality, not everyone who tries to find them succeeds. As the Rocks are not an ‘official’ National Park site, there is no sign on the road, nor marked trail to the site. And maybe that’s a good thing.
Read MoreThere are trillions and trillions of rocks at Joshua Tree National Park and I hiked over many of them on my way to the Contact Mine. At least it felt that way. Big rocks, little rocks, sharp rocks, moving rocks. I also discovered a new sport I call “Rock Surfing.” It’s a spontaneous and unexpected event that occurred several times when I stepped or jumped onto large, flat rocks along the trail that I assumed would not move when I landed on them. Depending on the angle of the trail, I sometimes caught a pretty good scree wave and “surfed” the trail several feet.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
