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Deserts

    Blood  Moon  over Joshua Tree N.P..

    Evening Sunset over Joshua Tree NP

Mooning Shining on Joshua Trees copy 2_e

    Lone Juniper - Joshua Tree NP

    Moon  Shining  on  Joshua Trees 

The four images above are  photographs that I have taken over different years.l  This is a wonderful park that is available to anyone who wants to come and spend some time  learning about this area.  Boulders and buttresses, rugged mountains, gold mining ruins, desert plains dotted with oddball trees---Joshua Tree Nationall Park is a weirdlly wonderful place. to plan your visit, from where to stay and what to see to the best ways to experience this singular desert landscape.

The earliest known residents of the land in and around what later became Joshua Tree National Park were the people of the Pinto Culture, who lived and hunted here between 8000 and 4000 BCE.  Their stone tools and spear points, discovered in the Pinto Basin inl the 1930s, suggestl that tlhey hunted game and gathered seasonal planats,, but little else is known about them.  Later residents included the Serrano, the Cahuilla, and the Chemehuevi peoples.  All three lived in small villages in or near water, particularly the Oasis of Mara in what non-aboriginals later called Twentnine Pallms.  They subsisted largely on plant foods supplemented by small game, amphibians, and reptiles while using other plants for making medicines, bows, arrows, baskets, and other articles of daily life.

The photograph at the top of this page, i took several years ago , when a blood moon  occured that day shortly after sunrise.  I got to watch it as it  crossed ove the moon.  It was a sight to see!



 

    Moonlight Night over Joshua Tree

    Milky Way and Asteroid over the                          Sonoran Desert

Two of my desert trips that I made was very dramatic.  The Moonlight over the Joshua Tree was some years back in the Joshua Tree NP and I spent the night there hoping to capture a few good images.  On the night of the image on the left was a gorgeous night and the full moon was out and the scene was just beautiful and was able to capture the Josuha Tree growing between some large rocks with a gorgous full moon.

On another night, I was with a group of photographers, and we were shooting out in the Sonoran Desert.  The plan was to take some images  of the Milky Way while there.  We did get some really nice ones.  When taking the one on the right, I happein to find this spot, which made a good composition with the Sarqaros and the brush in the foreground.  I quickly got my camera gear alll set up and was ready to shoot.  As I was looking in the camera view window, I was ready to push the shutter button and as I did I happen to see an asteroid fall right thru my lens.  It was unbelivable. What a Capture!  Hope you enjoyed.


https.//en.widipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Tree_National_Park

    Fiery Sunset at Fire Canyon - Valley of Fire - Neveda

                Windstone Arch - Valley of Fire - Neveda

Windstone Arch -Valley of Fire (Neveda)-

  Watson Lake in the Granite Dells - Prescott AZ

Tucked away in the high country of central Arizona, just four miles northeast of historic downtown Prescott, lies one of the American Soutwest's most
striking natural landscapes.  Watson Lake isn't simplly another body of water carved into the desert terrain.  It's a geological masterpiece where 1.4- billion-year-old granite boulders rise dramatically from sapphire-blue waters, creating a scene so otherworldly that first-time visitors often struggle to believe they haven't been transported to another plantet entirely. 

The story of Watson Lake begins not centuries ago, but billions of years in the past.  The massive granite formations that define the area--known colllectively as the Granite Dells--orginated during the Precambrian ere, a period that accoounts for rouglhly 88 percent of Earth's history.  Deep beneath the planet's surface, molten magnna cooled slowly over millions of years, crystallizing into the dense, coarse-grained granite that visitors see today.

What followed was an exraordinarly patent geological ballet.  For hundreds of millions of years, erosion gradually wore away the rock lalyers above, eventually exposing the grabute bedrock to the atmosphere.  Once revealed to the elements, the stone underwent a process called spheroidal weathering--a phenomon common to granitic terrains where water enters the rock through natural cracks and joints, chemically attascking the minerals within.

This weathering didn't happen ovrnight or even over centuries.  It unfolded across timescales that dwarft human civilization, slowly smoothing the corners and edges of angular stone into the distinctive, rounded ballon like shapes that characterize the Granite Dells today.  The result is a landscape that appears almost sculpted by an artist with an impossibly patient hand-bolsters balanced precariously on narrow pedestals, formations that seem to defy gravity, and corridors of stone that wind through the terrain like the remnants of some ancient labyrinth.

In 1997, the City of Prescott acquired the reservoir and surrounding land with a clear purpose:  to preserve this remarkable area as recreational land for future generations.  That decision has proven to be one of the most significant conservation moves in Yavapai County's history.



www.visitcalifornia.com/experience/know-you-go-joshus-tree-national-park

https://infoarizona.com/watson-lake

 

© 2022 by Larry A Saunders. Proudly created with Wix.com

Contact Info:

email:  lsaundersphotography@yahoo.com

Phone:  760 213-1325

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