Joshua Tree National Park

In our growing quest to visit as many of America's National Parks as possible, one of the reasons we chose Palm Springs was to visit nearby Joshua Tree National Park.

The famed Joshua tree for which the park is named, but it's a park because of the three different deserts (Mohave, Sonoran and Colorado, as if I could tell the difference) that intersect and overlap in the park.  According to Wikipedia the Mormon's named the Joshua tree because it looked like it has hands praying to god. (Eye Roll)

Driving through the park, there are a couple places with huge swaths of Joshua Trees, but I didn't see any outside the park, however apparently they are found at certain desert elevations in the American Southwest.

Another bonus for the trip was to see the desert flowers.  I expected to see vast seas of colored flowers, but it was more a "look, there's some bright color."  I'm not a desert person, but I was surprised at the many different flowers in bloom.

This picture doesn't give much scale, but this plant, the ocotillo, is over 10 feet tall.

We did a couple small hikes, but the hike up Ryan Mountain gave us some great views of the desert.

Finishing up the clockwise loop from Palm Springs through Joshua Tree, we ended up heading to the Salton Sea.  As we descended below sea level, we saw the magic of irrigation.

The sea is actually an "accidental" sea was formed when a canal was breached in 1905 and for two years water flowed into the Salton Sink, now the Salton Sea.

The increasing salinity means that fish can no longer survive in the sea.

Sunset over the mountains above Palm Springs.