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Archive for the ‘Joshua Tree’ Category

Today’s post is also from Joshua Tree National Park, but this one actually has a Joshua Tree in it!

As you can see, Joshua Trees are strange looking things. It is a plant from the Yucca family and is also known by the name of Yucca Palm, Tree Yucca or Palm Tree Yucca. When you touch the tree, you will be surprised at how “solid” it feels. It is a very “dense” and heavy wood and you can tell when you touch it.

The tree seems to only grow in the Mohave Desert parts of the park, in the higher (northern) elevations.

The other thing that stands out in Joshua Tree National Park are the large number of rocks and boulders. This picture shows a typical cluster. Those rocky cluster make excellent rock-climbing areas and when my son and I were there we saw a large number of rock climbing groups throughout the park.

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At the end of the Salton View Road in Joshua Tree National Park is a lookout called Keys View. No it has nothing to do with the Florida Keys, they are clear across the country no where near here. In fact there is barely any water here as Joshua Tree National Park is desert. There are two types of desert actually: Mohave Desert in the northern, higher elevation part of the park and Colorado Desert, in the southern, lower elevation parts.

The only body of water in the neighborhood is the Salton Sea, which you can see in this pictures just beyond those mountains. Like Mono Lake, it has a high salinity level. The Salton Sea lies directly on the San Andreas Fault and, like Death Valley, lies below sea level.

Joshua Tree National Park is quite beautiful although hot. My son and I visited here to go do some hikes and take photos and went in May thinking we’d beat the real heat. Well no such luck, it turned out to be the hottest May in years and we got temperatures around 100F (37.8C). It is a dry heat which I find infinitely more bearable than humid heat, but one sure ends up drinking a lot of water!

This shot is my usual HDR shot with 3 bracketed shots and processed in Dynamic Photo HDR followed by some tweaking in Lightroom.

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