On The Road With TCR!

‘K, where was I?

Oh yeah, in Vegas.  Land of The Free, Home of The Broke, brightly lit lair of That Giant Sucking Sound.

We packed the Patriot (kids, don’t try this at home!) and got out of there tout-de-suite.

Headed south, we did, with Robert Cat eagerly scanning the road ahead for lunch:

I’ve always found the desert to be intriguing, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride.  Lizz drove The.Entire.Way.  Which was cool with me, as I get out West so seldom and loved the opportunity to play Swivel-Head.

We headed for our first night’s destination, Joshua Tree National Park, a couple of hours south on the divide between the higher Mojave and lower Sonoran deserts.

Evening found us in the vacinity of the Amboy Crater, somewhat north of Twenty-Nine Palms, where we stopped to enjoy what would turn out to be our last colorful sunset of the trip – the skies just didn’t cooperate that way.

But for this evening, it was good:

Amboy’s black cinder cone punctuated the planar landscape as the wind, another constant theme of the trip, picked up.  In these conditions, rocks and bushes make better subjects than grasses and flowers, which refuse to stand still for the long exposures necessary in low light.  Here, dried tufts of vegetation dot a vista of volcanic rock:

And amidst the starkness, a single desert lily, Hesperocallis undulata,   doubtless in reference to its beautiful wavy-margined basal leaves:

And then, no big surprise, the sun went down, it got dark, and we continued on to JT to camp.

More in the future, though this weekend is looking busy.   🙂