February 26, Tuesday Desert Hot Springs, Cal
One day last week a cold front was coming through here with winds and cooler temperatures. We weren't complaining as the mid-west was getting blasted with blowing snow and really cold temperatures.
We decided it was a good day to take a car ride out to
Joshua Tree National Park. Being a "senior citizen", we used our National Park pass to just zip right in without the park fee.
The scenery is amazing. The huge boulders everywhere were so interesting, and we had never seen a
Joshua Tree. It was amazing how they just suddenly started appearing on our way to the park.
We drove to one spot that had a lookout over the valley. We could see the San Andreas Fault. It was like a line across the valley. Really amazing, but I don't think any of my pictures shows it very well. You will just have to come and see it for yourselves. I did decide we were on the "right" side if Calif. decided to break away at that moment.
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| There was some snow on the ground up here. |
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| You can see the fault line in the valley below and behind us in the valley. |
And of course, the most important part of the park for Becki and I:
We saw a couple of trails that we wanted to come back to and walk, so put that on our list.
On Tuesday, we packed lunches and headed back out to Joshua Tree for our adventure.
First we went to the Hidden Valley walk.
"Hidden Valley is a small granite enclosed valley in the western part of
Joshua Tree National Park. On this side of the park, the landscape is
dominated by vast piles and mounds of weathered granite, the result of
the intrusion and slow cooling of magma within the earth's crust in this
region eons ago. Piles of boulders occur where weathering of the solid
granite took place underground prior to exposure of the rock to the
surface. Above ground, the granite not worn into boulders exhibits
great cracks, thought to have formed by expansion as the weight of the
overlying rock was removed by erosion. Subsequent further erosion of
the granite smooths and opens these cracks, creating the rounded
features and eventually cutting off slabs from the larger body of rock."
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| Ready to go! |
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| Love the rock formations. |
Right after we started the walk, Becki's camera ran out of batteries. We took pictures for her for awhile, then Gene remembered that he had some batteries in the back pack for his gps. He was Becki's hero!
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| Changing batteries in camera. |
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| Our lunch spot. |
After lunch, we found the next walk.
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| Not a long walk, but amazing scenery. |
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| Ready to start. |
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| A scary corner around that boulder! |
We had two great little "hikes" and we just loved the scenery.
