A Joshua Tree

Twenty-Nine Palms

I’m taking a little break from romance this week, visiting Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California before getting back to my last minute holiday shopping, baking, and housecleaning. We’ve parked our small motorhome conveniently nearby in Twenty-Nine Palms, California, a town near a U.S. Marine Corps training base. For its size, the town has a disproportionate number of tattoo parlours, liquor stores, and barber shops. But I spent my very early formative years on military bases, and it feels homey. Plus, from here, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump into Joshua Tree.

Joshua Tree

The desert in these parts is scrubby looking until you get into Joshua Tree. Inside the national park, it looks like a team of Southern California landscapers might have created a sophisticated “desertscape”, instead of the hand of God at work.

What’s important about the park?

• The undisturbed population of Joshua trees
• The convergence of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts
• The meeting of the Pacific Plate and the North American plate at the San Andreas Fault
• Huge, amazing boulder formations

The view from the Keys overlook

That horizontal line in this view from the Keys overlook is the San Andreas Fault, famous generator of Southern California earthquakes. This is also the approximate area where the Mojave Desert meets the Colorado Desert.

Someone hit a cell phone tower in the area here, so my wifi is too spotty for me to provide some links to explain all of this, but a simple Google search will provide more information.

Though I’ll be sharing a couple of guest author posts this week, I’ll mostly be busy with holiday tasks. I wish all of you many blessings of this holiday season!

All images: the author