joshua tree national park

this past weekend we decided to take a weekend trip to joshua tree national park, in southeastern california. the park straddles two deserts, the mojave and the colorado. the mojave is cooler and higher up, and is marked by an abundance of joshua trees and rock formations.

joshua trees are interesting plants. they're not actually trees - they are actually a type of yucca. many of them do grow to resemble trees with branches, but some of them remain looking rather underdeveloped.

the joshua trees were named by mormons who thought that the upraised branches of the tree resembled the biblical joshua. early explorers attempted to cut the trees down for firewood, only to discover that they were in fact filled with water, and thus fireproof.

at keys view, in the southwestern portion of the park, you can see the san andreas fault, which causes many socal earthquakes. you can actually see as far as mexico from that view.

the park is a popular destination for climbers, too. we did our own share of fooling around on the rocks, but they are not as smooth as they look.

more desert plants:

as we drove south, we crossed from the mojave through to the colorado, and the joshua trees disappeared. instead the teddy bear chollas became the distinguishing feature of the landscape. teddy bear cholla are these deceptively fuzzy looking cacti that are incredibly dangerous because their spines are so sticky. they're also known as jumping cholla because their spines seem to jump into clothes, skin, etc.

experimentally, roy kicked one and the spines immediately stuck onto the bottom of his shoe.

at the southern border of the desert we found an oasis, where there was a thick grove of california fan palm trees.

after we got out of the desert, we still had a few hours of daylight, so we decided to drive to salton sea, a saltwater lake nearby. the salton sea is the largest lake in california, and was actually an accidental lake caused by the flooding of the colorado river into a basin. nowadays it attracts hundreds of thousands of birds every year who come to feast on the tilapia thriving in the salty waters. we saw a large number of cranes and pelicans, the latter of whom had apparently scattered fish corpses all over the beach.

the salton sea area was originally going to be a mediterranean style resort, but increasing salinity in the lake led to a dying off of a lot of fish species (the lake has no outlets whatsoever, so nothing flows out). now all that's left around the area are some railroads and a surreal ghost town called Bombay Beach, filled with trailers and ancient automobiles. we would have taken more pictures, but we were afraid of being jumped.