Joshua Tree National Monument

Joshua Tree National Monument spreads across mountain desert northeast of the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs, Palm Desert, etc). Last Friday Bill Fritz and I made the drive through the Monument, mainly to view the desert spring flowers which were scheduled to be in full bloom after a wet (for this area) winter. JTNM (link) is a great place for seeing wildflowers in March, blooming Cacti in April and May, and some really, really big rocks year round. It has some excellent campgrounds, and would be a nice place for star-gazing, but take a tent or small RV.

All of the pictures can be enlarged with a left-click

This is a 3o+ ft high Joshua tree with early blooms (they are huge!) at the top.

The flowers were found mainly on the south entrance to the park.
Full bloom as advertised!

The park is full of huge piles of boulders; those above reach up to 200'
(click to enlarge)

These piles began as solid layers of rock, with fracture lines scattered within them.
Over time, moisture and organisms enlarged the fracture/fault lines, and eventually the rocks separated and fell into piles as we see today.

We brought our lunch and enjoyed a sunny picnic table among the rocks.

This was the backdrop for our meal. The silence was deafening after weeks in town.

The Cholla garden is quite a site, and dangerous. (Click to enlarge)
A young woman was taking pictures and stepped back into one of these, with the barbed spines going right through her clothing and into her skin. Several good Samaritans with pliers removed the barbs, but not the inflammation and pain. Here is a link to a very nice photographic essay on this group of cholla.