Joshua Tree

Winter is a great time to wander through the desert – the temperatures are tolerable and most of the dangerous critters that live there are hibernating. We spent a sunny day exploring the sights of Joshua Tree National Park and enjoying the desert’s quiet time of year.

California is famous for many things – one of them is earthquakes. And you can’t mention California earthquakes without bringing up the San Andreas Fault. No one knows when the next big one will strike, we only know that it will, and this particular fault line will probably have something to do with it.

Now, I’m just a kid from the Midwest who didn’t have to worry about surviving such a disaster in my part of the country while growing up, so I’ve always found earthquakes eerie and fascinating. Standing on the mountain top and gazing out for miles across the valley, I felt completely powerful and completely vulnerable at the same time, but it was amazing. It was also really windy!

My mom is one of those people who believes that one day a giant earthqauke is going to break the state of California off the North American tectonic plate completely and send it crashing into the ocean. She’s also afraid of heights and ledges. So Justin and I couldn’t resist having a little fun at her expense and posing for an artist interpretation of what it would look like if the big one were to hit at the moment we stood on the edge of the fault line where it’s most likely to hit. As you can see, it’s pretty dramatic.

Our last stop of the day was a place in the park called Rattlesnake Canyon – named in honor of it’s population of, you guessed it, rattlesnakes! Fortunately, the little buggers were hibernating when we came through, so we were able to wander around in only a minimal amount of danger.