Blessings #4

Hello all, day #4 has come and gone already! Way too fast!!

We were blessed immensely yesterday as we took the entire day to visit the Joshua Tree National Park. This million acre park is located about 45 min north of Palm Springs. We arrived there later morning and took in the very unique scenery right away! This park is SO different than anything we have ever seen. The rock formations looked like piles of discarded rocks, but we are sure that is not the case. God certainly had some fun creating this area! He certainly has a great imagination! A very large part of the park has joshua trees growing all over the place. Like a forest but not like ours in Alberta. In the heavily forested area of the trees, they are probably 100 ft apart with very little undergrowth. Take a look at the photos below and see what you think!

R&B under a Joshua Tree

This is just one of the many unique and awesome rock formations. Many appeared as just a pile of rocks randomly placed! Can you see the rock climbers?

Another hiker took this photo for us. We went for a mile long loop hike through the "Hidden Valley" so named for the ability to hide rustled cattle without being seen.

This is Cap Rock. This large rock is just "hangin' around"!

We stopped at Keys West, the view point into the valley where Palm Springs is located in the far right under the "mountain". From this vantage point you can see the San Andreas Fault where there is a long strip of rock in the valley floor about two thirds accross this photo. We drove over the fault line later in the day to get back to Palm Springs.

This is a close up of the Cholla Cactus. One little guy in 1997 found out how they "jump" at you sticking there very sharp tines into you without warning. This cholla was located at the Cholla Garden on the way out of the park. The littered the landscape in this area. It was fanastic to see but we needed to be very careful not to get too close as we walked by them on the pathway in and around the garden. Garden is not really the right word to use though.

We are being blessed with great weather and just yesterday we saw someting very strange in the sky that we have not seen since we left Alberta. I think they call them clouds.