Cholla Cactus Garden
We went for a drive today. Took the Jag. Out east of La Quinta to the Box Canyon road.
http://www.americansouthwest.net/california/box_canyon/
Wasn't much of a canyon, didn't see any boxes either. There are supposedly some nice hikes here that we'll do another day but today we weren't equipped for hiking. Just flip flops. The road we were on lead into the Joshua Tree National Park though and we came across the Cholla Cactus Garden.
These are just some pics and vids of the day. These cactii (pretty schooly sound word eh?) are pretty neat. I'm sure the pics won't show how cool they are. Maybe you'll just have to come here and see for yourself sometime.
Note: if you use Chrome as your browser you can right click on these photos and select "open in new tab". They then open at a larger size. This does not work in Internet Explorer.
I don't think they are poisonous - you just wouldn't want to fall face first onto one. They have thousands of very sharp needles.
Here some little critter has built itself a nest at the base of one of the catuses (is that better than cactii?). It almost looks like he's rolled a bunch of cactus balls up to the door to keep the other critters out. These little cactus balls must break off the main plants because they're all over the place. Maybe that's how they reproduce. Seems like kind of a shi##y way.
Here's a video from the Cactus Garden
Here's another funky tree - the Ocotillo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fouquieria_splendens
Here's a video from the Ocotillo patch.
Terri the tourist. A lot of people like the little car. They come to look and talk about it.
And here's a video of the car ride home. We've had a couple days of wind here and this was taken on the highway north of Palm Springs. It was so bad we had to put the top up. You can hear the sand hitting the car. No damage though.