Carve impossible vistas.
Jumbled and stacked.
Boulders perch, tossed like balls.
Cracked spines.
Desert ice cream cones.
Joshua Trees twist in tortured poses.
Mother Nature’s iconic artistry.
A gift to treasure and protect.
Joshua Tree National Park encompasses almost 800,000 acres and straddles both The Mojave and Colorado Deserts in Southern California. Joshua Trees are not trees at all, but a variety of Yucca, sculpted into bizarre shapes by desert winds. The eerie rock formations were formed eons ago by cooling lava, that cracked and split from fault uplifting, and eroded over time by wind, water and sand.
100’s of species survive in this harsh desert landscape, despite summer temperature that reach well above 100 degrees fahrenheit. Native Americans inhabited this region for thousands of years and their artifacts remain scattered throughout the park. Be careful or you will walk right by them! We encountered this metate, or grinding stone, on a hike.
Cheers to you from Joshua Tree’s stunning and fragile ecosystem~
Share this:
Discover more from Cindy Knoke
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Beautiful stark photos. What a landscape!
Alison
I love the desert and have been visiting it since I was a kid. It is a world unto it’s own.
Lovely photos–reminders of the wonderment of our days in The High Desert!
The high desert has such pure beauty.
Mother Nature is really amazing!
She can’t be bested!
Some of the forms look like sand castles from a distance. Stark beauty.
Yes they do, right before a wave washes them away…..
perfect!
Mother Nature doesn’t mess around!
Such a beautiful and remarkable region!
California, despite her fires, her earthquakes, and all her troubles, has so many different national parks and ecosystems, and such an incredible wealth of natural beauty.
It is indeed! ♥️
<3
Man can never reproduce that what Nature has left for us to enjoy. Great pictures.
We can’t even come close can we, which is just another reason why we shouldn’t ruin our natural places.
No sights could be farther removed from our gentle well-watered eastern coastline. It’s said we Americans don’t all live on the same planet; geography and climate are clearly part of that! Wonderful shots, as always, Cindy!
I love that our country has all this incredible natural diversity. The more beleaguered California becomes, fires, floods, earthquakes, border conflicts, the more I treasure her, and want to protect her. She has always been my home. Someone was telling me recently that they live in the most beautiful place in the world and aren’t interested is seeing other places because they won’t measure up. It is good to be content where you are. It is also good to move about, and see the incredible variety of beauty that exists on this very small planet of ours. Hugs to you and Marian.
You have opened our eyes to the beauty of many places, and we now look forward with great anticipation when we see a post from you has arrived! Thank you! Happy as we may be with the places we call home, our lives our enriched by your travelogues and photos.
Love all the photos.
Ahhh, makes me happy. Thank you.
Stunning scenery
If there were some Roos it could be Oz!
Same colours but no Joshua trees over here, at least I don’t think so.
Nope. You have to come over here to see them. I would love it if you and Jack would!
So would we, but I think our long distance flying days are sadly over.
I hear you. Flying is no fun.
how amazing, it almost looks otherworldly
Yes, it does always seem otherworldly to me.
Your words and photographs perfectly capture “Mother Nature’ iconic artistry.”
Thank you.
Merci beaucoup mon ami.
Beautiful captures, Cindy! This park is on our bucket list!!
Oh wonderful. Be sure and let me know when you head this way and I may have some insider tips…..
Will do! Thank you Cindy!
<3
Oh that gorgeous blue sky! Fabulous rock formations, too.
We are lucky to have such an amazing variety of stunning ecosystems in this country. I still dream about your minks…….I have seen one in my lifetime!
Oh, those minks, cute as all getout. My son was fishing in a river recently and he saw one approaching. He stayed still and it came right up to him, touched his boot, then slowly looked alllll the waaaaay up…. “YIKES!” and was gone in a flash. Hehe, I can just imagine its surprise.
A gopher did exactly this to me here at The Holler. Still, not even close to how thrilled I’d be by a mink!
My husband and I enjoyed Canyonlands in Utah. It looks very similar. So pretty in its own unique way!
Canyonlands is drop dead gorgeous, and Arches, with the amazing rainbow bridges. Such ethereal beauty!
Yes! We went to Arches, too! Toured by road and by air. It was wonderful!
Arches is pure magic.
It’s beautiful! The sky is so blue! Amazing photos. 🙂
Ahhh, thank you & so happy you enjoyed them.
loved this post… muah
Hugs to you sweet lady <3
Awesome photos of an awesome landscape!
Thank you Dor and hope you and your family had a wonderful TG <3
I love Joshua Trees…one of my favorite places on the planet. Thanks for sharing the beautiful photos.
Thank you more for appreciating them & the desert.
That last picture looks an awful lot like a pig nose! We loved exploring all the different crags and monoliths while we were at Joshua. Was it very hot?
The desert is lovely this time of year, cool temps and no people, and you’re right, the metate does look a bit like Miss Piggy’s snout!
Marvellous and inspiring landscape. Thank you for the beautiful photos, dear Cindy. 🙂
Thank you more for your kind appreciation!
I love these!
Thank you!
Such interesting landscapes. I’m a fan of rocks. 🙂
Rocks are interesting, the product of Mother Nature’s forge.
Before my first trip to a desert, I thought they were just made of miles of sand and nothing else. How wrong I was. Wonderful photos showing the variety in a desert landscape.
Thank you & so true. The desert is full of hidden life which is a testament to biological resilience.
gorgeous, gorgeous photos.
So kind of you & so appreciated too! Lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you too, Cindy. Please stop by my blog sometime at http://www.racquelwrites.com.
I will do so now.
Desert + red rocks + variety of rock formations + bright blue sky = FANTASTIC!
Thank you Frank. It’s Red Rock Country. It gets in your blood, and never lets you go.
Desolate, but beautiful with signs of life everywhere! Great shots, Cindy!
Thank you Peter. It is amazing to consider how resilient life is, and how the harshest environments shelter very fragile life.
Hi. Thank you for this. The American Southwest is the next destination in planning, but deciding where to go is complicated given all the beauty. This park is now being seriously considered.
If you are planning, talk to me. I can help and would love to. I have been traveling through the American Southwest all my life, and sadly, I just looked in the mirror, and was shocked to see I am no longer young!! There are lots of very cool reptiles too…..
I will love to get suggestions from you! Thank you for the offer! In truth, the trip shouldn’t happen for a long time. However, my traveling companion is adamant, it may happen as soon as spring time. Hope I can enjoy the scenery with cute lizards running around! “Inside every old person is a young person wondering wth happened.” (-unknown) I don’t think you’re old, beautiful. Personally,I think I should still be 25!
“Personally,I think I should still be 25!”
I like the way you think!!! 😉
WOW, beautiful! I marvel at God’s creations, so pretty! Thank you for sharing these beautiful pictures with us!!!
Yes. God’s creation is everything <3
So true, Cindy!💖
Aptly titled and beautifully framed, as always, Cindy.
Images like these remind me of why I believe in life on other planets.
Thanks so much for sharing.
Yes. Hostile and formidable to us, may be nirvana to others, and there are universes upon universes, we know nothing at all about. We have enough trouble figuring out how to live on our own little planet.
ain’t that the truth
<3
Your photographs are truly beautiful and your captions perfect. What a lovely place this must be to visit: I can imagine a warm wind on my face, skin prickling slightly and the feeling of awe from being in the presence of such catastrophic earth movements now left in silence.
How beautifully you describe the incredible feelings the desert in SoCal can evoke in a receptive person. I can imagine that if you were actually here, you would realize how accurate your impressions really are. The faults may be silent now, but they are just waiting, to roar once again, and upset everything <3
It’s been a long time since I’ve been there – I need to go back.
<3 I keep going bach.
Reblogged this on Musings on Life & Experience and commented:
Stunning pictures of Joshua Tree National Park by Cindy Knoke.
You are a lovely friend Patricia. Thank you <3
Impressive pictures! Thank you, Cindy.
Thank you more for your appreciation & be well~
Wow! Really wonderful! I do wish I could reblog some of your posts. Right now, I’m not even able to “like” them. There is a technical problem. I’ll try to get it resolved. The rocks are really amazing!
Rocks are like silent testifiers. So happy you enjoy them too & sorry about the technical glitches. They make life frustrating.
You live in such a beautiful country, Cindy. It’s a pity that beauty is often obscured by other images which come to us from the US. You are a great ambassador for America the Beautiful (and America the Kind! 🙂 ).
America is incredibly beautiful. She needs to work on the kindness. This sorta sounds like an elementary school report card doesn’t it? Which is fitting, since kindness is elemental. Without kindness you have nothing.
🙂 🙂
I love the colours – the blue sky – the desert colours, looks great in your amazing pictures.
Ahhh, thank you my friend & so pleased you enjoyed!
Reblogged this on Echoes in the Mist.
You fixed the technical glitch! Hooray.A day without a computer glitch, is a good day indeed! I even dream sometimes of viruses taking over my computer. I am becoming melded to my machine!
The colours and shapes are fantastic. So abstract and yet all natural. Wonderful.
Sometimes natural scenes look like they were tinkered at by a great artist, which I guess, they are!
Indeed!
<3
Outstanding beauty and it never astonished me that in the harshest of landscape nature survives … the Joshua Trees are amazing and the rock formations are breathtaking!
Ahhhh, thank you so much for appreciating this harsh, yet fragile, beauty Annika.
Awesome photos and such beauty too
Thank you & happy you enjoyed!
Most welcome xx
<3 <3
I am not a fan of deserts but they do have a raw beauty.
Like Edna said, they have a certain “savage beauty.”
A great description
Reblogged this on Smorgasbord Blog Magazine and commented:
As I look out of my study window on to rain and wind lashed garden, with summer seemingly miles behind me in the rear view mirror, I am transported as always by the amazing photography of Cindy Knoke and her desert moonscapes taken in the Joshua Tree National Park. #Fabulous
It is ridiculous that we can’t swap spots for a bit. You could soak up the sun, and I could sit by the fire with cocoa, relishing the rain. <3 <3
Would do it in a heartbeat Cindy ♥♥
wunderschön, liebe Cindy, hoffe, du bist gut in die Woche gekommen?
Danke und ja, alles ist gut. Ich wünsche dir eine wunderbare Woche, mein Freund!
bin heute verkabelt-Blutdruck und EKG, beste Grüße von mir zu dir
Ich sende dir meine Gebete!
You have made good use of the deep blue sky against the burnished rocks
Thank you. It was just waiting there for me!
🙂
Beautifully clicked! Thanks for sharing Cindy.
Thank you more for your thoughtful appreciation!
Wow!!!
Except for the Joshua Trees, it could be another planet… Mars, maybe? 😀
It could easily be another planet. Not to far from here, many of the scenes from Star Trek and other such movies were filmed.
Well – that really fits! 😀
It does.
The landscape is so surreal and amazing. The Flintstones’ come to mind as well too, yabba dabba doo! 🙂
Nature is truly amazing. It’s incredible to be looking at these scenes and think of how people passing by hundreds and thousands of years ago, see the same thing too as these formations are shaped very very slowly.
It is mind boggling to think of geologic and biological time isn’t it. But now I keep thinking of Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Pebbles too of course, driving off in their stone age car, powered by Fred’s floppy feet!!! Be well Halim~
Uniquely beautiful! Thank you for the tour, Cindy.
Thank you more for traveling with me.
I’m not a fan of the desert after living in Phoenix but I will say that it definitely has a beauty all of its own. It can be amazing and you’ve captured it beautifully! 🙂
Thank you Linda and I hear you. It must be hard to live full time in the heat. I remember when you moved and were worried about the cold. It sounds like you have adapted well. Good for you <3