Park Blvd. ♦ 2013 April 1
Related 2013 Apr 1 Link:
National Park Service Joshua Trees Link
- Use glasses to view 3D Anaglyphs
- Click to Enlarge Photos
2D ♦ 3D Anaglyph ♦ 3D Half Side-by-Side
(Click to Enlarge)
TO BORROW A TERM FROM HORSE RACING, the Joshua Trees really turned on the afterburners in the spring of 2013. This happened not only in Joshua Tree National Park. The entire Southwest had reports of a once in a multi-decade Superbloom when the rich greenish cream yellow florescences exploded on these unusual yucca plants. I happened to visit JTNP on April 1 that year. Naturally, I was fooled, this being April Fool’s Day. I didn’t realize it at the time, only that I was seeing and photographing numerous flower stalks on many of the plants. I learned a week later from news reports and web postings that 2013 had indeed an unusually prolific bloom cycle.
In the spring of 2014, normal conditions returned.
Some are of the opinion this superbloom is due to a series of very dry winters in the preceding years. The trees were setting an abundance of seed pods “just in case” many of them did not survive the drought.
Most of the photographs you see were taken along Park Boulevard from Hidden Valley to the Hall of Horrors. Enjoy them. I may have the only set of pictures of this event shot in 3D at Joshua Tree. You are welcome to download as many of them as you like and share them with your friends who collect 3D photographs (or 2D for that matter, since I am posting the 2Ds along with the 3D Anaglyphs and 3D Half Side-by-Sides on this page).
Thank you for visiting Joshua Tree 3D.
It is plain to see the extremely dry conditions in the preliminary galleries, visible also, in the brown backgroud around the blooming Joshuas in the following galleries. These first pictures were near Turtle Rock (adjacent to Hidden Valley) and again at the pullout for Oyster Bar. The soil is parched; there is little or no green vegetation, unlike most Aprils after the park has gotten its normal winter rainfall.
Dry
2D (Click photos to enlarge)
3D Anaglyph (Use red-cyan glasses)
3D Half Side-by-Side
Bloom
2D (Click photos to enlarge. Slideshow takes a minute to load.)
3D Anaglyph (Use red-cyan glasses)
3D Half Side-by-Side
Aftermath ♦ Five Months Later, 2013 Aug 30
At the end of August, fellow photographer E! conducted an excursion for two to Joshua Tree to see Samuelson’s Rocks in the Quail Springs area of the park. I joined him. (Samuelson had died in the 1920s, and so was unable to show us around or explain his reasons for scratching messages on the rocks.)
I did notice on this trip how the flower pods had dried and turned to seed since April’s superbloom. Each pod contained a hundred or more little flat black seeds. I took pictures of some of the clusters while my friend Nikonned a rusty old car and inspected a dilapidated house that had crumbled to the ground. Here are a few pictures in 2D and 3D:
2D
3D Anaglyph (Use red-cyan glasses)
3D Half Side-by-Side (for 3D TV viewing)
Posted 2014 Nov 12
Updated 2016 May 9
