“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.
Park you vehicle anywhere (safely and legally), grab your hiking gear and start hiking in the direction that no one else would go. That's what I did and here are some of the things I found (in no particular order).
Read MoreYes, there is a Henhouse in JTree. And i'm not referring to the one at Keys Ranch, made from that old car. The one Murbachi (intrepid 3-D photojournalist/explorer and discoverer of Surprise Tank) and I were heading to would dwarf the henhouse at Keys Ranch by multiples of enormous magnitude.
Read MoreSure, I started out strong and in the right direction. I knew that the spot I was looking for was up a canyon, along a wash, just a walk in the park. Unless you miss the wash coming down from that canyon over there, just as you round the corner of that mountain on the north and then continue down the main drainage until you get to the next big wash coming down from the south and then climb a rise to look around and realize that you've hiked way too far.
Read MoreI was traveling light on this short trek. Leaving GrayTac at the convenient parking area located about 1/3-mile west from Oyster Bar, I grabbed my camera, an extra lens and a bottle of water and set out to see what I could find on this near-perfect hiking day.
Read MoreIt was early April and the wildflowers were everywhere. Sometimes you had to look for them, but they gave themselves away with their bright spots of color against the unusually green desert backdrop.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
