“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.
The Ryan Ranch Ruins at Lost Horse Well have intrigued me from the first time I saw them many years ago, whilst driving along Park Blvd towards a campsite at Jumbo Rocks. The stark, eroded adobe walls of the main ranch house have some kind of eerie allure that has drawn me to visit them many times since that first encounter.
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.
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It had been over ten years since I last saw any water in Barker Dam, so when I heard reports that the recent monsoons had filled the dam up, I knew I wanted to get out and take a look. Then Murbachi emailed me some photos he took on 9/11/2013 and I knew the reports were true. Hoping there would still be enough water in the dam to provide some nice photos, and in spite of the weather forecast predicting temps in the mid-90s, I set out for the park.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
