Joshua Tree National Park

Tuesday December 1, 2009
Wow, we are already in December. Seems the time is going by too fast, we want it to slow down. But I guess we will have to wait until we get to Ajijic for that to happen, it really does seem like life is slower there.
We are getting ready to go on a little day trip to Joshua Tree National Park. I will post some pictures later today when we get back home.

Back home now... we had a great day, put over 300 km on the car. Joshua Tree was beautiful. We started at the south end of the park, stopping all along the way at each "Exhibit", or explanation of one thing or another. Above is a picture of Joshua trees and the fascinating rock formations common in the park. The rocks look like someone has just piled them there, but they are actually formed by a molten form of rock called monzogranite. As it cools it cracks, then it works it's way to the surface and groundwater widens the cracks and rounds the edges. Eventually soil is eroded away, exposing these beautiful formations. Really, unbelievable. I thought the Joshua trees were pretty neat, but the rocks were very cool!
On our way home, we drove through Desert Hot Springs and saw another unbelievable sight..... windmills as far as the eye could see! We stopped to get some pictures and got blown back inside the car. We can understand why they have so many, but this is definitely a place that would be hazardous to birds. It was really hard to get a picture to show the scope of this, but if you can just imagine that we are in the middle of them and each direction you look are more windmills, that is all you can see, they just keep going and going and going.
























Tomorrow we leave La Quinta and head towards Tucson. We will spend the night there and then drive across the Mexican border on Thursday morning.
Adios!