Day 125 – Cable ants and rock tumblers – The Great Schnitzel Jagd

Jan. 8
Joshua Tree Village
Total driving so far 5,537 miles / 8,859 km

http://Our-Joshua Tree-hangout-on-google.maps

What the heck are cable ants and rock tumblers? … I did not know either before visiting Joshua Tree National Park. Up to this point I was only aware of the album cover of that famous U2 album.

We decided to leave the California central coast after the massive flooding in the Santa Cruz area and more rain forecasted for the week of Jan-9th. Joshua Tree National Park was on our to-be-seen list, and its desert climate makes it very appealing for a January visit. 449 miles / 718 km, a Saturday of driving, and we were there.

On Sunday we headed for the first time into the park and we saw a lot of cable ants.

And the park is all about shapes.

Strange shapes; and quiet, calming shapes; amazing colors; sparse but diverse vegetation; a kind of underwater world that emerged into the alternative existence of a desert.

*Skull rock, a classic instagram location; this is after sun set, so amazingly no other people around except the model & the photographer*

*did I say ‘amazing shapes’ … you should guess who the photographer was* …

*a more meditative formation of which there are many*

*one XT-version of the classic Joshua Tree*

Shapes, colors, big land, silence, all the ingredientsfor my personal ‘magic mushroom’ when taking my cameras out, popping two 128 GB cards into my Fuji medium format high resolution monster, loading 120 film into my Mamiya7 rangefinder (10 exposures, that’s it) and search for that special capture of … something.

*Key’s view at 5,185 feet / 1,700m sea level*, the park’s highest point

*large wind farms on the foot of the San Gorgonio Mountain – great !*

Key’s point offers a great view on Palm Spring, the Coachella valley, Salton Lake to the left and the snow-covered peak of the 11,500-foot / 3,500m high San Gorgonio Mountain to the right. Over 35 miles of view.

What is astonishing that on most days, despite the desert climate, the view is too hazy to see Palm Springs. Reason: smog from the coastal areas, Los Angeles, degrading air quality…

The underwater world really unfolds in what is called the ‘Cholla Cactus Garden’:

*already in ‘mushroom’ photography ‘high’*

These cylindrical cholla cacti grow across the park, but in the garden area named after them, there is a whole sea of them. They look like reef corals to me.