Joshua Tree Ramblings

I'm on the way home from Arizona. As usual, I drove thru Joshua Tree National Park. And, like last year, there are a lot of fine spring flowers after a wet winter. The winter was also cold, so the blooms are a bit late. A lot of cactus are not yet blooming, but this beavertail was a spectacular exception!

JTNP has flowers in the spring, and cool rocks all year round. Here desert dandelions carpet the ground with a big ol' rockpile in the distance.

The various types of hardy plant life in the desert are often bizarre and artistic when viewed close up. Here a cholla cactus bristles at the photographer. Not good to get too close!

The Lizards, of course, love the desert; it's their natural habitat. And here Lizard and Verde have found a friend...a real lizard! The picture is a little deceptive...the lizard in the background is actually on a different rock. The Lizards enjoyed hanging out with a fellow member of the species.

JTNP has a lot of big rockpiles. Actually, these stones were once underground. They were split by magma intrusion, then exposed by erosion, and then weathered by millennia of freezing and thawing. JTNP is one of my favorite places...it's beautiful and surreal. I was thinking of staying here another day, but it's supposed to turn cool and windy tomorrow so I probably won't. Sometime, though, I''ll come back and poke around for several days instead of just passing through.