It’s hard to believe this park is only 2 ½ hours from 12 million people and there were so few visitors. Joshua Tree National Park is nearly 800,000 protected acres in Southern California where the Mojave and Colorado deserts converge. We entered the park from the south where the Colorado Desert lies at an elevation of 3,000 feet and climbed northwest into the Mojave at elevations of four and five thousand feet where huge granite boulders rise up among the pinyon pines, junipers, Mojave yuccas, prickly pears in addition to the park’s namesake: the Joshua Trees. Although they can grow up to 40 feet tall (at a rate of an inch per year) the Joshua Tree isn’t a tree at all, but species of yucca.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno