Where Two Deserts Meet

Nope, it's not what you imagine when you hear "desert"! Temperature is very variable in the Mojave desert, everything inbetween snow and heat. It is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains and named for a group of indigenous people.  It's one of four deserts in North America (see photo on the left). The Mojave is the smallest and driest, with a pattern of a series of parallel mountain ranges and valleys. It's called a "high desert", with elevations between 2,000 and 4,000 ft. (600-1.200 m). That showed during our yesterday's visit to the Joshua Tree National Park's northern part: it was cool and windy.

While the characteristic plant of the Mojave is the Joshua Tree (see further  below), the Saguaro cactus it the symbol of the Sonoran Desert, which stretches further south. This is a hot desert  that covers the NW of Mexico and parts of California and Arizona. We'll get more of that landscape once we drive east on Monday, to Arizona.

Joshua Tree National Park is unique in regard to its two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado Desert (the latter is part of the Sonoran D.). It is home to a huge variety of plants and animals, e.g. white-tailed antelopes, squirrels, kangaroo rats, coyotes, fox, bobcat or bighorn sheep. There is an abundance of reptiles including lizards, snakes, and the desert tortoise and there are over 250 bird species. On the right: a modest chipmunk (Streifenhörnchen).

Beavertail cactus

Connecting two deserts, the area is occupied by different combinations of vegetation: ocotillo plants, palo verde trees, creosote, teddy bear cholla cactus (above, right), Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia - pic on the right, taken at Cap Rock), yucca moyavii and Nolina Parryi (above, left, another yucca variety). There is creosote and pinon pine trees, beavertail cacti, turbinella oaks and much much more plants, unfortunately none in bloom yet (too early).

Park is huge and well frequented by visitors. We decided to do a couple shorter hikes and nature trails instead of one longer one. Tried to identify as much plants as we could (most people just run through) and were blown away by the fantastic rock formations in the park. See yourselves:

Hidden Valley:

Barker Dam - where a local rancher built a dam to have water for cattle passing through:

Keys View - note the St. Andreas Fault (Erdspalte) running through on the second photo below! In the background, left upper corner, is Salton Sea (more on Monday), in the center is the Coachella Valley below with Palm Springs in the center. 

Our next stopps were named for rock formations: Split Rock and Skull Rock (below):

 

It's been an interesting day, and, though, we didn't hike long distances, we were sort of dusty and thirsty afterwards. Left the park and drove into Twentynine Palms, with its (not highly impressive) Oasis of Mara, with 29 palm trees, and, the world-largest Marine Training Center. In town there are many murals to be found (spread out, so we walked again!), and,,, there is a microbrewery, where we had a snack and a beer for the price of a dinner in Elko,,, But, well, at least atmosphere was great.