Category: Southern California

Exploring Joshua Tree National Park

~ lawrencepallant ~ 9 Comments

Last week I drove out to Joshua Tree National Park to explore some new areas and to spend the night in a favorite backcountry area in the open desert.

Camping in the open desert and being there for sunset was the best part. In fact, I specifically headed here because I saw high clouds in the forecast. High clouds at sunset means the possibility of nice colors. That’s what I got: a beautiful sunset with a slow burn afterwards. I had been waiting for a long time to catch this.

Joshua Tree Silhouette
Hidden Desert
Through the Branches
Joshua Tree Moon

During the day I explored some other areas of the park. There are so many interesting rock formations.

Dwarf Juniper in Wash
The Keyhole
Juniper

Click here to see more photos.

Sunset in Laguna Mountains

~ lawrencepallant ~ 2 Comments

I love exploring new areas. A week ago, I hiked in the Laguna Mountains in San Diego at an elevation between 5000 to 6000 feet. There were patches of snow left-over from a recent storm. On this day, the wind was blowing and the temperature was quickly dropping as I took the photos below. My exposed fingers were quickly becoming numb and dysfunctional.

Sunset Pines – 24mm

The next shot was taken in the same location but zoomed in to 105mm. Notice the lone tree between the two foreground mountains in the shot below. Now, see if you can find that same tree in the right 1/3 of the the shot above.

Wooded Sunset – 105mm

While hiking we came across some interesting rocks. I call the photo below Ladybug Rock because the rock on the right looks like a bug head with antenna (trees) extending from it.

Ladybug Rock

To see more photos from this hike click here.