CA -- Joshua Tree Natl Park:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Description of Pictures: I'm not sure what I thought the attraction of Joshua Tree would be. At this point, I was pretty tired of deserts. I think the main reason I wanted to go there was because of a the title of the "Joshua Tree" U2 album.
The park is mostly known for its groves a Joshua trees (surprise!). I asked the ranger for a suggested camera-friendly tour route and took that. As with Death Valley, a highlight was seeing another begging coyote (which is loaded on a separate page).
Perversely, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that another highlight involved taking a nature trail in the Cholla Cactus Garden. These are cactus which appear to be covered by soft, silvery bristles, which gives them the common name "teddy bear" cholla. In actuality, however, the bristles have sharp points as well as hairs with tiny hooks in them. If you touch the cactus, they touch back and stick into you. If you yank the piece that sticks into you, it hurts. It's said that even a car tire can be destroyed by these things.
Which is why there are signs all over the place saying "stay on the trail," "do not touch," "no dogs" etc.
Now, let's say you're a parent and you have two bored kids in the SUV. They're in a hot desert and they're impatient. Maybe they're ADD or AD/HD. Given that, would you as a parent let the little buggers go on this nature hike?
There were only two other cars parked there when I get there. One had kids. Sure enough, I hear this kid screaming before long. A guy from the other car says "You know, the sad thing is that when I was at the visitor center, I think I saw that same kid screaming because of thistles."
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- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- JOSH_020603_09.JPG: Perversely, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that one of the highlights from my visit to Joshua Tree involved taking a nature trail in the Cholla Cactus Garden. These are cactus which appear to be covered by soft, silvery bristles, which gives them the common name "teddy bear" cholla. In actuality, however, the bristles have sharp points as well as hairs with tiny hooks in them. If you touch the cactus, they touch back and stick into you. If you yank the piece that sticks into you, it hurts. It's said that even a car tire can be destroyed by these things.
Which is why there are signs all over the place saying "stay on the trail," "do not touch," "no dogs" etc.
Now, let's say you're a parent and you have two bored kids in the SUV. They're in a hot desert and they're impatient. Maybe they're ADD or AD/HD. Given that, would you as a parent let the little buggers go on this nature hike?
There were only two other cars parked there when I get there. One had kids. Sure enough, I hear this kid screaming before long. A guy from the other car says "You know, the sad thing is that when I was at the visitor center, I think I saw that same kid screaming because of thistles."
- AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
- Wikipedia Description: Joshua Tree National Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joshua Tree National Park is located in south-eastern California. Declared a U.S. National Park in 1994, it had previously been a U.S. National Monument since 1936. It includes 1,234 mi˛ (3,196 km˛) of land. A large part of the park is designated wilderness area; some 914 mi˛ (2,367 km˛).
Straddling the San Bernardino County/Riverside County border, the park includes parts of two deserts, each an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation. Below 3,000 feet (900 m), the Colorado Desert encompasses the eastern part of the park and features natural gardens of creosote bush, ocotillo, and cholla cactus. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park.
The higher, moister, and slightly cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), from which the park gets its name. In addition to Joshua tree forests, the western part of the park includes some of the most interesting geologic displays found in California's deserts. The dominant geologic features of this landscape are hills of bare rock, usually broken up into loose boulders. These hills are popular amongst rock climbing and scrambling enthusiasts. The flatland between these hills is sparsely forested with Joshua trees. Together with the boulder piles and Skull Rock, the trees make the landscape otherworldly. Five Washingtonia fan palm oases in the park are the few areas where water occurs naturally and wildlife abounds.
At least 240 species of birds have been observed in the park. A good place to view wildlife is at Barker Dam, a short hike from a parking area near Hidden Valley. Desert Bighorn Sheep sometimes stop by the dam for a drink. Tours of the Barker Dam area are available.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].