Desert beauty revealed in Joshua Tree’s giant boulder fields and spiny, spiky plants
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Although we’re a nature-loving family, the natural beauty that my wife, youngest kids and I experienced at Joshua Tree National Park was unlike any we’ve encountered before.
Indeed, the Rhode Island-sized park, although just a few hours east of Los Angeles or San Diego, is a sere, starkly lovely — and very pointy — side of California that many visitors never experience. (Fortunately, the park has avoided the recent rash of California wildfires.)
The trip to the desert was the first for my 12-year-old twins. They are experienced explorers of the fields and riparian forests of Ohio and of the shores and semitropical wetlands of south Florida. But Joshua Tree gave them a look at not one, but two great desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Sonora, which are stunning even to more experienced travelers.
During our spring visit, crisp skies sharply delineated the other-worldly landscapes of boulder fields, dry arroyos and vast plains of spiny, spiky, desert-loving plants.
The park’s namesake tree — actually a giant yucca — thrives, as well as anything thrives, in the Mojave Desert.
The tree was named by Mormon settlers who thought it resembled Joshua from the Old Testament, lifting his arms toward heaven. They look more Dr. Seuss-ian The park’s iconic, namesake tree can be found throughout Joshua Tree National Park in Twentynine Palms, California.