Somewhere when the Joshuas turn into Cholla.....

Last week, I decided to take a detour through the Joshua Tree National Forest en route to Arizona. While I had visited the park round this time last year, I hadn't yet driven the park in its entirety. Map in hand, I paid the 15 dollar entry fee and head off specifically to look for the Cholla Garden. Interesting fact about the park is that there is a point where two deserts, the Mojave and Colorado, meet. Prior to the Promissory point of the park, the Joshua Trees begin to appear less often and a Cholla cactus will rear it's head instead. The Cholla Cactus, for those unfamiliar, are a beast of a plant which has several nicknames including Teddy Bear Cholla (soft they are not) and Jumping Cholla (which they seem to do if you walk too closely). Pieces of the plant fall off easily and if you walk too close and bump into one, beware. The needles of the plant seem to barb into your skin making them extremely painful and difficult to pull out. My one experience at 16 and being left with a welt of a battle wound taught me to walk as far as possible from these suckers.

Despite the deserved stigma attached, I still wanted to see a field full of Cholla as I had read about when looking closely at the park. About 20 minutes after the desert switch-a-roo, I saw a gleaming crop of Cholla.....as well as a warning sign!