Tag: Quartz Outcrop

In the spring of 2018, my oldest son and I visited Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. We photographed in the park in the early morning, late afternoon and night. During the middle hours of the day we scouted for places to photograph and/or we hiked several of the easy to moderate trails within the park. This post is not really about hiking so much as just exploring an area along Geology Road with illustrations via iPhone photos.

One can drive much of Geology Road in an ordinary passenger vehicle; but there are portions where a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle is recommended.

We drove much of the easier part of the road, including some of the rougher portions, stopping to explore around one boulder area.

There were some clouds to add interest to the photos and I am again contrasting color processing and monochrome processing.

My son standing on one of the rocks in the above photo gives one a sense of scale here.

One can always find interesting features within the boulder fields. In the preceding photos, note the window near the center of the photos.

Climbing around on the boulders, my son spotted what he referred to as a “bear” rock, nestled down within an opening between other large boulders. It looks like a modern art sculpture of a bear cub to me; but maybe others see something else.

 

The boulders (of which there are many scattered through out the park) are produced by weathering of plutonic intrusions.

Plants seemingly find a place to grow in the most unlikely places.

This panoramic image give one a sense of the openness of the area, even though there are large boulder piles and mountain peaks apparent in this vast desert area.

Fittingly, there are a few Joshua Trees scattered around within the boulder field.

Other desert type scrubby vegetation also populates the area.

A remnant of an old tree found within the boulder field.

Even a few California Barrel Cacti are present. A couple can be seen in the background of the gnarly tree trunk.

My son had found an outcrop of quartz in the desert opposite this boulder field on an earlier visit and he recalled how to hike to it again on this visit to the park. It is quite an impressive amount of quartz.

This post is short on words and maybe a bit long in photos; but at least that makes for a fast scan of the blog.

Until next time,

Ken