Joshua Tree National Park

On my recent travels, I had the opportunity to visit Joshua Tree National Park for several hours.  This national park is in California and is noted for the many different rock formations, abundance of Joshua Trees, cacti, desert plants, birds and animals.  The park is close to 793,000 acres in size.  The Joshua tree is an important part of the Mojave Desert ecosystem.  The oldest tree in the park is estimated to be 300 hundred years old.  This picture is of a Joshua tree situated by a pullout section in the road that allows for cars to stop.

This park has a range of different rock formations with some fantastic shapes.  We saw a number of rock climbers at various locations in the park.  The following picture has some rock climbers scaling one particular formation but you likely won't be able to pick them out in the photo as this was the best close-up I could take.

We saw some wildlife while walking a nature trail, the Hidden Valley and while stopped at pullouts on the park road.  We saw a roadrunner, hawk, jay, lizard, a ground squirrel, raven, and a coyote.  The coyote was in scrub brush close to where you parked your car to start the Hidden Valley nature trail.  He/she may have been hanging around looking for food scraps.  As soon as I saw the coyote I started to stalk it.  He/she was slowly sauntering off in the brush and I was determined to get closer and take a picture.  The irony of this is that at home, there are coyotes in the area where I walk the dog and I try to avoid them.  I am not anxious to meet up with one while out with the dog.  Yet here I was slowly walking in the brush and trying to get closer to see the animal and take a picture.  The picture is not great as the sun was in my eyes, I wasn't sure if the photo was focussed and I knew that I had to keep a reasonable distance away.   The coyote was in good shape.  In the photo, you see the back side of the coyote and it is standing beside an old tree stump.