Which can get really shaggy unless someone prunes them... .
A train with four locomotives - lots of these trains are over 100 cars long.
There's a tunnel right thru this mountain, to bring water from the rainy side to the dry side for drinking and irrigation.
In these really arid places, there is always more vegetation next to the road. Reason is that the rain that falls on the road itself runs off to the edge, so the plants right next to the road get that much more water...which still isnt all that much.
First stop, Joshua Tree National Park:
But where are these Joshua Trees? What does one look like anyhow? Entering from the South, we saw all sorts of the usual desert fauna:
First stop, Joshua Tree National Park:But where are these Joshua Trees? What does one look like anyhow? Entering from the South, we saw all sorts of the usual desert fauna:
Teddy-bear Cholla
for miles and miles, getting halfway thru the park, before we finally got to:
And finally, a whole lot of them:
The fruits, which naturally the Indians used to harvest:
This one's right out of Dr Seuss. The name was given them by the Mormons, who thought they looked like the Prophet Joshua welcoming them to the Promised Land, i. e. Utah. Most of them, anyway; some thought he wasn't welcoming them but beckoning, onward. They followed on as long as there were J-Trees, and ended up in San Bernardino, California.
Next, the Mohave Desert. Desertologists say there are three principal regimes: Sonora, which is in New Mex. and (mainly) Mexico; Sonora, in northern New Mex and southern Cal, and the Great Basin, farther north. So this is the middle of the three. The commonest plants there, and all through most deserts, it seems, are:
Prickly Pear,
Creosote Bush (one of the few plants here that has no prickers; but, as you can guess from the name, it tastes pretty bad)
and Sagebrush. It has no prickers and smells really wonderful. Somehow,it doesn't get all eaten anyway. 
This, at the visitors' Center, is a tamarisk. They imported it to grow along river banks and hold them together to prevent erosion; unfortunately, it grows altogether too well and crowds out the native cottonwoods, etc.
Pencil Cholla
Death Valley: It is pretty dry, getting about 2" of rain a year, the least in the US. But things do grow there. The local Indians, who had been living there just fine for centuries, were a bit miffed at the name.
Lots of places have land with only a bit of cactus on it; these hills have NO plants at all.
Except sometimes a little bit along the rain-channels
Fascinating fact: all the world's deserts are located between 15 and 40 deg, North and South latitude. The reasons get complicated.
Bad Water (so called because one wagon train's mules refused to drink it):
The ground is really dry when it hasn't rained for a while.
Our truck; way up near the top, the little white thing is a sign that says "Sea Level".
Among the Earth's low points, DeathValley only ranks fifth; The world champion is the Dead Sea, more than twice as low as anything else.
But, all that said, it is a beautiful place:
The Harmony Borax Works: Who hasn't seen these old cans labelled 'Twenty Mule Team'
The wagon the twenty-mule team (actually, some of them were horses) towed. Note that there is a big water-tank included. They had to haul the stuff about 130 miles to the nearest railhead.
The place they mined it. Pretty desolate work. Nowadays, they get Borax from someplace else altogether. It's used for a lot of things, including welding and making Pyrex Glass.
Then on to near Lone Pine, California: A nature trail made by the Fort Independence Indian tribe.
A guard-tower that's all that's left fo Manzanita Internment Camp, one of the places that Japanese-Americans from the West Coast were sent to at the beginning of World War II. People thought they might be spies and saboteurs; in fact, not a single Japanese-American was even accused of any kind of espionage or sabotage, even in Hawaii, where there were so many of them that they just let them be. Anyway, they were uprooted on just a few days notice, had to sell or abandon everything they owned, even household pets; and spent the rest of the war here. They're trying to get organized to reconstruct some of the camp, which was completel;y demolished shortly before the end of the war.
And, the Lone Pine Movie Museum. It turns out that not only does Lone Pine have a lot of Western-type scenery, it is only a day's drive from Hollywood/Los Angeles; so a whole lot of movies were made here. This museum was started by a local couple, and has only been open about a year.
A Bad Day at Black Rock, in several languages
The Posse from Hell,
Monty Montana's trick riding saddle: notice there are a bunch of loops and handles that a regular saddle doesn't have.
Will Rogers
Movie Flats, an area in the Alabama Hills where hundreds of movies were made (the 'B Westerns')
A typical site; can't you hear the hoofbeats of the posse pounding along the trail of the evildoers?
...and around the bend...
Ambush Rocks, where numerous ambushes were filmed.
Bad Water (so called because one wagon train's mules refused to drink it):
The ground is really dry when it hasn't rained for a while. Our truck; way up near the top, the little white thing is a sign that says "Sea Level".
Among the Earth's low points, DeathValley only ranks fifth; The world champion is the Dead Sea, more than twice as low as anything else.
But, all that said, it is a beautiful place:
The Harmony Borax Works: Who hasn't seen these old cans labelled 'Twenty Mule Team'
The wagon the twenty-mule team (actually, some of them were horses) towed. Note that there is a big water-tank included. They had to haul the stuff about 130 miles to the nearest railhead.
The place they mined it. Pretty desolate work. Nowadays, they get Borax from someplace else altogether. It's used for a lot of things, including welding and making Pyrex Glass.
Then on to near Lone Pine, California: A nature trail made by the Fort Independence Indian tribe.
A guard-tower that's all that's left fo Manzanita Internment Camp, one of the places that Japanese-Americans from the West Coast were sent to at the beginning of World War II. People thought they might be spies and saboteurs; in fact, not a single Japanese-American was even accused of any kind of espionage or sabotage, even in Hawaii, where there were so many of them that they just let them be. Anyway, they were uprooted on just a few days notice, had to sell or abandon everything they owned, even household pets; and spent the rest of the war here. They're trying to get organized to reconstruct some of the camp, which was completel;y demolished shortly before the end of the war.
And, the Lone Pine Movie Museum. It turns out that not only does Lone Pine have a lot of Western-type scenery, it is only a day's drive from Hollywood/Los Angeles; so a whole lot of movies were made here. This museum was started by a local couple, and has only been open about a year.
A Bad Day at Black Rock, in several languages
The Posse from Hell,
Monty Montana's trick riding saddle: notice there are a bunch of loops and handles that a regular saddle doesn't have.
Will Rogers
Movie Flats, an area in the Alabama Hills where hundreds of movies were made (the 'B Westerns')
A typical site; can't you hear the hoofbeats of the posse pounding along the trail of the evildoers?...and around the bend...
Ambush Rocks, where numerous ambushes were filmed.
A 'grinding circle'; the central pillar would anchor a beam which oxen would pull around in a circle, for various Biblical epics etc.
Barbara photographing a lizard.
Hoppy's Rock: Hopalong Cassidy made a couple of dozen films here.
The entrance to the Cattle Pen, where they kept the cattle and horses in between filming takes.
One end of the bridge for 'Gunga Din', now torn down. They also did 'King of the Khyber Rifles', etc.
And lastly, a formation called the 'Tufa Pinnacles.' In the days (50,000 years ago, give or take a few tens of thousands), when the whole area was a shallow sea, There were places where the water was hot and full of CO2. Add vents of hot, calcium-rich water comin in from the bottom, and you got a lot of coral-type animals building up tall hollow tubes of limestone:
A lot of stuff in California, and we'd barely begun.
Hoppy's Rock: Hopalong Cassidy made a couple of dozen films here.
The entrance to the Cattle Pen, where they kept the cattle and horses in between filming takes.
One end of the bridge for 'Gunga Din', now torn down. They also did 'King of the Khyber Rifles', etc.
And lastly, a formation called the 'Tufa Pinnacles.' In the days (50,000 years ago, give or take a few tens of thousands), when the whole area was a shallow sea, There were places where the water was hot and full of CO2. Add vents of hot, calcium-rich water comin in from the bottom, and you got a lot of coral-type animals building up tall hollow tubes of limestone:
A lot of stuff in California, and we'd barely begun.
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