13Mar22 photos: Joshua Tree National Park

Last week was spring break for Rocket Kid, so we took a few days to go camping at our favorite place to camp: Joshua Tree National Park.

We were in a campground we haven’t stayed in before, and most of the places we explored were also novel. The park is enormous, and I feel like we could go there a couple of times per year for a really long time before we ran out of places to check out for the first time.

To kick it off, four versions of one photo of the park’s namesake.

Which is your favorite?

A closer look at a joshua tree, with a bird heading out:

joshua tree with a black bird taking off with a mountain in the background

They’re funny-looking trees, really.

Near our campground was an abandoned ranch. I’m always amazed that people came through the desert and thought, “This would be a great place to raise cattle.”

Man-made and not abandoned? Camp fire. It was colder than we expected (and colder than it’s typically been this time of year).

The place is enormous and if you have any wonder in you at all, you’ll be taken in by it all.

Of course, I can never pass up a good cactus skeleton. This is a cholla.

In the distance, snow-capped mountains.

Sunset. My view from the camp site.

In my defense, I didn’t take pictures of most of the dead trees. Just a few of them.

The rocks are as breathtaking as anything else and are a ton of fun to scramble around on.

We agreed that this particular joshua tree looked Seuss-like, and that we could enhance it’s oddness by messing with the settings on the photo.

Trailhead across from our campsite:

And one macro shot

A beautiful place! Highly recommend.

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