With the purchase of the Scamp trailer, we are making plans to visit as many National Parks as possible to drive to. Not all parks are within that limitation (American Samoa, Hawaii, and a few in Alaska, etc.). With the desert wildflower bloom now on in its full majesty we planned a trip to Joshua Tree National Park in southern California. It wasn’t so much of a visit as a drive through. We left Ivins, UT and Gunlock Reservoir and drove down into the Mojave Desert. Our primary destination was Anza-Borrego State Park, but we detoured through Joshua Tree and spent the night there first. As a first taste, Joshua Tree is definitely a park we want to return to and explore. There are many great landscapes to see closer up. We only stopped for one brief hike within the park, the Mastodon Peak loop trail in the southern area of the park. It was a 2½ mile hike over hills covered in wildflowers. Sadly, we were there in midafternoon, and the conditions were less than ideal for photography. We knew the Cottonwood Canyon area was going to be a nice place to see the desert in bloom because I’ve been following field reports on the internet. Sure enough, after leaving Mastodon Peak, we continued towards the south entrance to the park at Cottonwood Canyon. The slope leading downhill towards I-10 was fully ablaze in a wild bloom of brilliant color. I spent the next two hours, until sunset, photographing among the ocotillos, barrel cactus, and vast stretches of poppy, lupin, chia, and many other flowers.

Some years ago, I read an instructional post on the internet of a photography technique the author called meadow diving. This technique is practiced by placing the camera lens at the level of the flower heads, using a long lens and a shallow depth of field, and shooting through the flowers. This method is best practiced without the use of a tripod in order to allow for subtle movements of shooting past flowers in the foreground. Because the depth of field is shallow, flowers that are closer to the photographer blur to an undefined splash of color, sometimes in complimentary to the flower that is in focus. It was windy the afternoon I was there, and I knew the movement of the flower heads would be a problem, which was another reason I decided on a “meadow dive”. With a shallow depth of field, I could get my shutter speed up to 1000/sec, plenty of speed to freeze the motion caused by the constant breeze. I found that for all the images I made that afternoon, my keeper ratio was still quite low. I struggled with compositions. The movement of the flowers, the out of focus foreground, and finding a pleasing out of focus background were difficult tasks to manage. It was glorious nonetheless, to sit amid the flowering meadow with the intoxicating aroma of the flowers, and with the bees and butterflies buzzing and darting around me.

We camped that night on BLM land immediately outside the park boundary. We never intended to begin boondocking in our new trailer because we thought that most of our overnights would be within the national parks. But at this time of the year, Joshua Tree was full, and our only option was dispersed camping. We had a great time and a quiet and peaceful night’s rest. Next week I’ll share my images from Anza-Borrego. This week we leave for another trip to California. This next journey will take us to the bloom at Carrizo Plains National Monument.