After driving up from the Salton sea, we checked in to a small house I had found on airbnb. It was excellent. The next day we were up at dawn. The first thing we visited was the Noah Purifoy outdoor sculpture park, which was only a few minutes’ drive from our house. It looked like this:
Afterwards we headed down to the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. At the entrance to the park we were greeted with this wonderful sight:
A leaning Joshua tree
The Joshua Tree, for those who haven’t been to the Wikipedia page, was so named by the Mormon explorers who first came to this part of the world. They reckoned the tree resembled a biblical prophet. Well, that’s I suppose what happens if you spend too much time reading the Good Book.
We spent the day visiting the park. It is of course very large, and looking at all my pictures it turns out it is not so easy to take good pictures of boulders and trees! But here are a few that I like, together with a very helpful park ranger whom we met at the entrance to the park and who told us all about the geological past of Joshua Tree National Park.
Inside the park we met some friendly folks who were bouldering, and we hung out with them for a while. They were kind enough to let me take pictures of them.
Sunset came rapidly enough, at 4:30pm. The last photographic opportunity of the day:
A “selfie” at sunset
Once the sun set, we hit the road again for Los Angeles. I put a certain album by well-known Irish rockers on the streaming audio. I am not an enormous fan of their stuff, but that album came out just a few years before I left Ireland, so there is a certain historical significance. Other album: Lloyd Cole’s “Music in a foreign language” which has got some good songs about LA. I got my flight back to Paris the next day after spending a relaxing day with my cousin and his friend in Sunland.
That’s for my trip to LA! Next time, Marseille. Thank you for your attention.
Here are my other posts on 52rolls. and…here is my website.
Technical. Photographs were taken with a Leica M6 with a Summicron f2.0/50mm. Film: Kodak Tri-X 400 developed in HC110 B for around 6mins.
52 rolls 
Great stuff. The U2 song came to mind immediately. I look foward to a trip to Arizona in February.
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Thanks !
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I have many memories of J-tree when I was in college. I think a number of these turned out quite well.
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AHA! Yes photographing rocks is not as easy at it seems it should be. But being a geologist for more than 30 years I’ve had a lot of practice (all color transparency film….try that sometime!). But these are great, B&W lends itself to the boulders.
Interesting your comment regarding the NIR sensors. I now work in remote sensing. Couldn’t get by without at least one NIR. Fortunately two of our satellites even have 3 NIR sensors.
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