{"id":9567,"date":"2022-12-29T21:03:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T04:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/?p=9567"},"modified":"2022-12-29T21:03:15","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T04:03:15","slug":"joshua-tree-np-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchgrun.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/29\/joshua-tree-np-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua Tree NP, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Joshua Tree National Park while on a road trip to California. It was late in the day when I arrived at Yukka Valley, so by the time I headed into the park, the sun had already set. The next morning I headed to the park, arriving just as the sun was rising above the granite hills. I made my way along a trail where I found this yukka plant, adorned with a long stem that flowered in some earlier season.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0003-Yukka-At-Sunrise-Joshua-Tree-NP\"
Yukka At Sunrise, Joshua Tree NP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The park is named after the Joshua Tree. Here is one of the first images that I made of a Joshua Tree that morning.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0008-Joshua-Tree-At-Sunrise-Joshua-Tree-NP\"
Joshua Tree At Sunrise, Joshua Tree NP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I found a pair of Joshua Trees. In this image, the sun was low in the sky. Moving around, I made sure that the sun was located behind the trunk of the tree and created a silhouette of the two trees.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0029-Joshua-Tree-Silhouette-At-Sunrise\"
Joshua Tree Silhouette At Sunrise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The higher elevations of the park are formed over granite intrusions. I found this granite boulder lit by the morning sun against a wall of granite that had vertical fractures resulting from erosion over the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0036-Granite-Boulders-Joshua-Tree-NP\"
Granite Boulders, Joshua Tree NP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This was my second season visiting the park, so I headed down a track that led to Wall Street Mill. While exploring the area, I had a familiar tapping sound. Soon I discovered this Ladderback Woodpecker feeding on bugs in a Joshua Tree. The woodpecker was working up through the tree, allowing me to approach closely. Soon the bird reached the tree top, where it perched awhile before finding another tree.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0208-Ladderback-Woodpecker-On-Joshua-Tree\"
Ladderback Woodpecker On Joshua Tree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At a lower elevation of the park, which is much warmer that the higher Mohave Desert area, is the Cholla Cactus Garden. On this visit, I reached the garden in the afternoon, when the sun was low in the sky. The Teddy Bear Cholla look like a forest of cactii! I like how the low sun lights the cholla spines in this image.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0281-Cholla-Garden-Joshua-Tree-NP\"
Cholla Garden, Joshua Tree NP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I made another closeup image of one of the cholla plants.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0215-Teddy-Bear-Cholla-Closeup\"
Teddy Bear Cholla Closeup.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I had decided to leave the macro lens at home for this trip. However, I did bring a Lensbaby lens that allows a softfocus image to be created. It also had a limited macro capability. I used this to get close to a shaded area of one the cholla, where the remains of the flowers and fruit were located.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0277-Teddy-Bear-Cholla-Fruit\"
Teddy Bear Cholla Fruit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Teddy Bear Cholla have nasty spines. Occasionally, a ball of spines fall from the cholla, and roll around the ground. One got attached to my boot so I had to work it off without touching the spines. They can be very painful! In this image below, I decided to focus on the distant cholla heads, leaving the closer cholla soft and fuzzy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0285-Backlit-Cholla-Joshua-Tree-NP\"
Backlit Cholla, Joshua Tree NP.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As the sun sank lower in the sky, I headed to a location where a roadside Joshua Tree cast long shadows on the tarmac road. This road was especially busy at that time of the day, so I made several images. This was one of the images made in between the passage of vehicles along the road.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"2771-0358-Joshua-Tree-Road-Shadows\"
Joshua Tree, Road Shadows.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I did manage to capture some with cars passing, but those were deleted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Joshua Tree National Park while on a road trip to California. It was late in the day when I arrived at Yukka Valley, so by the time I headed into the park, the sun had already set. The next morning I headed to the park, arriving just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[563,1786,224,690,1788,351,34,27,1856,1855,1854],"class_list":["post-9567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-general","tag-boulders","tag-cholla","tag-granite","tag-joshua-tree","tag-national-park","tag-shadows","tag-sunrise","tag-sunset","tag-teddy-bear","tag-woodpecker","tag-yukka"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t