Beyond Here

I had some friends come over for dinner last night. And one of them brought for me this huge tray full of the most lovely flowers - Orchids. It took me quite a while to snip and snap the stems and arrange the flowers in the different vases ( I was able to fill up 6 bud vases in all) and even after that I had a small tray of flowers left over. But once it was all done, they made a pretty sight. And I went "Oh!" for Orchids. P.S. Love the flowers - thanks Rosalyn.

As I mentioned in my last post, JTNP is the location where 2 different desert ecosystems come together, the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert. While the Mojave Desert is at higher elevations (above 3000ft) and is characterized by the Joshua Trees, the lower elevations (less than 3000 ft) is part of the Colorado Desert and home to some very interesting cactii species. The Pinto Basin We entered the part from the North Entrance (Twentynine Palms) and very soon we were surrounded by the vastness of the Colorado Desert. As we drove along, and took mini-trails to capture the scenes into our camera, we realized that the camera was not doing justice to the views. The panoramic views of the Pinto basin, for example, as captured by the camera were not half as good as the actual views themselves. Now that may be our camera (we have a point and shoot and not a digital SLR and I have been making a case to my husband to buy a DSLR) or it maybe the fact that the field of vision of the human ey...

This weekend we travelled to the Joshua Tree National Park. It was my idea. And my husband just played along. I had gotten a book recently from Barnes and Noble on the National Parks of US and while going through it, I realized that we were just a 2.5 hour drive from this park. So I waited eagerly for the right weather and some free time, and off we went. From San Diego, we started early in the morning and reached the north entrance visitor centre at about 11 in the morning. To be honest, there was not much I expected - from the pictures in the book it was not a typical desert with sand dunes and unlike Rajasthan back in India, it did not even have forts to offer. It was more out of curiosity - after all the most scenic spots in US are preserved as National Parks. When we finally entered the park and drove through the place, what greeted us totally took us by surprise. I am sure my husband shared my feelings - he mentioned he was glad to come to the Park after every 20-30 minutes. As I...