Sand Blazing Star flowers in the Joshua Tree National Forest

Sand Blazing Star
Originally uploaded by bonbayel.

I think this is one of the prettiest flower pictures I took - meaning that it was the prettiest clump of flowers I came across.

Leaving Prescott we drove down on the lovely curvy 89 highway, to the 70 (I think) and then the 60 before finally reaching Interstate 10 that took us over the Colorado back home to California. Along the way was a fantastic show of flowers, particularly as we came down from the hills, but there was not place to stop, so they are just in our memory. We did stop along the 60 to say goodby to the Saguaras (which were on the other side of a fence.) The pictures we got there are in the cactus set.

As we went over the hills toward Palm Springs, I suggested to Hanne that we drive up to the Joshua Tree National Forest, to the Cottonwood Spring area. Since we'd just been siting all day, Hanne agreed, even though she was eager to get to the hotel and pool! Stupidly we went in wearing sandals, which meant that walking wasn't very comfortable. ("Sandal" means shoe that gets full of sand!) But the flowers were still spectacular, even though we heard we were a little late.

Soon after I moved here, Hanne visited us in February 2001 and wanted to see the desert. So we had gone to the Northern Entrance near 29 Palms. There were few flowers out then, but we loved climbing on the rocks, and saw some petroglyphs. A month later, John and I had come out to Cottonwood and taken a much longer walk than we did in our sandals. I have all those pictures on Snapfish. I'll have to see about uploading them here.

Particularly seeing the cactus bloom was an incredible experience.