In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

The photos are from THIS SmugMug Gallery and are documented in THIS post. That post covers one of the stops in our flight from the Mainland, the Joshua Trees National Park.

It might be worth reading the original post since I’m writing this in a hurry because it’s late and I’m tired. Plus, the post is from seven years ago, when I was much cleverer, funny, and creative.

The gallery opens with the namesake.

It hardly seems worth mentioning that there are many Joshua Trees in the park (hence the name, I suspect).

So, Joshua Trees . . . it turns out they are in the Yucca family. Some might remember my post about the Yucca Plant, a native plant growing pretty much all over the area where I used to live (Monument, Colorado). It also turns out that the same moth, the appropriately named yucca moth, fertilizes yucca trees.

“Where does the name come from?” one might ask. I presume you mean the tree, and not the moth. 

Well, Mormons apparently named the plant because it resembled the Biblical character Joshua raising his hands in prayer to his murderous god. Not many will click on the link, so let me give you a quick summary of Joshua, the man, and his god (after another photo). 

Anyway, Joshua got around. He was Moses’s wing-man the first time Moses received the Ten Commandments. Later, Joshua led the attack on Jerico and led the subsequent slaughter of every man, woman, and child (and oxen, donkeys, and cows) after the walls of Jerico came crumbling down with the aid of some trumpets and the Ark of the Covenant.  

You see, god promised the land of Canaan to the Israelites, so, of course, to make good on his promise, he helped Joshua slaughter the many, many people who were at the time occupying it (and the animals, too). Ah, the merciful god of Abraham. You got to love him. He’s all-powerful, you see, but rather than relocate the people occupying Canaan to, oh, I don’t know, what is now the US and Mexico, this merciful god decided it was more expedient to slaughter children.

Back to my travels . . . I saw new animals while driving through the park . . .

I even saw a gorilla . . .

Don’t see it? Here, let me help (again) . . .

There are others, but you can find them in the original post or the SmugMug Gallery. This next one, though, should be fairly obvious . . . it’s called skull rock, but I see it more as the head of a dog.

Anyway, it was an interesting (if short) time at the park.

Here’s the slideshow

Note: the transition is set to 2sec. If it’s too fast, move the cursor anywhere within the photo — you’ll see a pause button on the lower left, and, once paused, you can use the left and right arrows on both sides of the photo to navigate the slideshow.

I highly suggest watching the slideshow in full-screen mode, but that’s just me.

You’ll exit the slideshow and find yourself in SmugMug if you click anywhere in the photo instead of the pause button. You can then scroll through the photos or interact in other ways.

Slideshow of the Leaving Monument – Joshua Tree NP Gallery — (63 photos)

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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