Eastern Sierra

Eastern Sierra
Eastern Sierra snow October 2010

Monday, March 25, 2013

No posts this weekend...sorry! And Joshua Tree national park visit Friday

I'm sorry I didn't post this past weekend.  I was completely worn out from our field trip Friday to Joshua Tree national park!  28 3rd graders can sure wear me out!   :-(  Actually, the kids were well behaved except for a couple of boys who were "seat hopping" on the way back to school.  And, one of them had his father with him!!!???***  Eh?  Excuse me?  I had to stand up and yell at them to "SIT DOWN!"  I mean, REALLY!?

We had a great park ranger take us on the Barker Dam loop.  Unfortunately, the basin there is COMPLETELY dry.  BONE DRY.  Not a drop of water in it.  I asked why and the ranger said it was this year's lack of rainfall.  Plus, vandals took the opportunity to write their names (first and last, DUH!) on the concrete dam.  So, now they are being tracked down and when caught, they will have to pay a fine for defacing public property.

The day wasn't too warm (about 80 degrees) and we had a nice breeze.  In fact, I wore my windbreaker (SPF 30) jacket, but my face got sunburned.  I'm in the process of re-evaluating the sunscreens I wear and I just ordered one from Mountain Rose Herbs that has zinc oxide plus a lot of nice-smelling things (SPF 30)...I HATE sunscreens that have too many "unnatural" ingredients with names I can't pronounce.  I'm tossing ALL of them.  As a melanoma survivor, I do have to be careful and I do wear a wide-brimmed hat and I have several denim long-sleeved shirts, thanks to hubby!  It's mainly my face that I have to cover and they also had a tube of natural sunscreen, like a lip gloss applicator, so I also ordered one of those.




Anyway, here are some pics of Joshua Tree that I took with my little Nikon Coolpix.  I didn't want to take my big Canon or my Nikon along, as there are some parts of the Barker Dam loop trail that are kind of close...didn't want a camera swinging from my neck!   :-)  Sorry for the head in the last photo!  There were about 35 of us gathered around looking at the graffiti...click on the photo to enlarge and see the awful mess the vandals left.

1 comment:

DeniseinVA said...

Too bad about the graffiti and I would have given that dad a time out along with those two boys ;) I was lucky enough to visit Joshua Tree several years ago and had breakfast in 29 Palms. I was only with hubby though and not as brave as you were with all those kids. It would have taken me a week to get over it. Great photos!