The "Salt Flats" at Amboy Road

 I spent a hot afternoon and most of the evening in Amboy, CA recently. It's a fascinating area and I came home with my camera's memory card full of photos. I'll be sharing those photos over the next few posts.

Before leaving my desert house, I spotted this desert iguana. He was huge! About 12' nose to tail tip. Usually they are skittish, but this one stayed in this spot for about 10 minutes before finally moving. He looks fat and happy!

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After about 50 minites of driving through the wide open desert from 29 Palms, you will come to the National Chloride Company. It's very remote: There is really nothing else out here, until you get to the "town" of Amboy. I've done no research on this company, or how chloride is made, but it's on my list of things to do.

 

The National Chloride Company operates on a huge dry lake, and the surrounding area looks like a lunar landscape. The soil (if that's what you can call it) looks odd. Not sandy, there's no vegetation, and with little pock holes and crusty irregularities that make for difficult walking. In some areas, it's white in color and looks like salt flats.

There are channels dug out throughout the area (although the channels themselves are mostly not visible from the road), and dirt from the channels form mounds you can see all over the dry lake. Very odd looking, like little mini pyramids. If you take the time to hike out to these mounds, and go over or around them to the opposite side, you will find something very surprising. 

 

 

 

The channels are full of water! Also surprising is the water seems to be flowing, and is a beautiful aqua color. On a hot day (and all summer days out here are scorching) you might think it's a desert mirage! You might be tempted to jump in!

I even discovered my own little island, although I couldn't find a way to get to it without a swim. And speaking of that, I wonder what kind of chemicals are in this water? Is it the chemicals that give the water a beautiful aqua color? And I wonder if the water is toxic? There's almost nothing growing next to the water, and I didn't see a single critter, not even a bird, near the water. Even if the water was safe, you would likely find the soil under the water to be soft and squishy. You would likely sink deep into the muck. You could slide down the steep bank for your swim, but you might find it's impossible to get back out!
 

Photo credit: Photographersnature (Wikipedia site)

I wish I could take credit for this photo. It occurred to me that this would be a wonderful location for sunset photography, and it even crossed my mind that a photo of the salt channels under the Milky Way could potentially be epic! But I also figured the good folks at the National Chloride Company probably wouldn't want me out here at night, and if I would trip and fall into a channel in the dead of night, it might be many days before my body was found!

 

This small minimalist structure is on the other side of the road from the National Chloride Company. It's been here a long time, and still looks to be in pretty good shape (at least from the outside). 

It appears the electrical wiring is long gone.

 

 

Elevated water storage tank?

 

Thanks for stopping by!! We've barely scratched the surface of what can be seen in and around Amboy, so stay tuned for future posts.

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Ryan Ranch Sunset

 Ryan Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park has a fascinating history. Here's a quck snippet:

 

The Ryan brothers homesteaded at this loction to take advantage of a natural spring that was once active here. The water was essential to the Lost Horse Mine, which they co-owned. Ryan Ranch supported the mining operation, pumping water 3.5 miles to the mine, in addition to processing ore and serving as a mining office and home. The cattle raised here helped feed the family and workers. Some 60 people lived at the ranch and mine during the gold boom. By 1908 full-time operation of the mine had ceased and the Ryans turned their attention to cattle ranching, until the establishment of Joshua Tree National Monument halted grazing.

 

Walking around Ryan Ranch is like stepping back in time. These old adobe walls are all that remain of the original ranch house. 

 

 

 

 

Close up of adobe wall. It looks like there is straw in the mixture!

 

A second, smaller adobe structure was once here.

 

Anyone missing a motor?

 

 

Looks like a storage structure of some kind.

Largest water tank at Ryan Ranch

A newer structure, probably built in the 50's.

 

Joshua tree "forest".

 

 

 

 

Imagine sitting among the Joshua trees in total solitude, watching the pastel sky slowly and silently deepen. The transition is subtle; before you know it, darkness takes over, shifting the horizon to a rich, deep blue as the stars begin to spark to life.

 

Side note: These last 4 photos (two above, two below) were taken with my cell phone. All were taken 30-45 minutes after sunset when things were getting quite dark. They were taken without a tripod, and I was expecting a blurry mess, but somehow they turned out quite nicely and relatively sharp. Amazing! Related note: The Hasselblad X2D II 100C has 10-stop in-body image stabilization. Hasselblad claims you can take perfectly sharp images in the dark!! I'm not throwing out my tripod yet (the Hasselblad camera body alone costs nearly $8,000), but the technology keeps getting better and better. It won't be long before a tripod is no longer needed except for special circumstances like astrophotography.

 

Thanks for stopping by!!

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Strawberry Moon

 I happened to be out in the Joshua Tree area during the nearly full moon in June (AKA Strawberry Moon) so of course I had to make time for some photography! I was a day or two early, but to my eye, the moon looked pretty full. There's a large rock formation out near Ryan Ranch called "Headstone Rock", and that was my destination.

Headstone Rock is hard to miss. It juts up high above the Joshua trees, and is just a short hike from the main road. It's a massive boulder, and the pictures don't do it justice (unless you get lucky and get a photo that includes a crazy rock climber in the process of climbing it). In addition to trying to get a picture of the moon rising next to Headstone Rock, I also wanted to scope it out as a possible Milky Way foreground.

 

I decided to make this my home base. I like the way the Joshua trees frame Headstone Rock. I set up my tripod and didn't move it for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I was hoping the moon would rise adjacent to and over the top of Headstone Rock. And if I had the patience, I could get some shots later in the evening of stars overhead.

 

8:45PM: Well, not bad, but as the moon rose higher, it also moved off to the right, away from Headstone Rock. I guess that's why they call them "plans"! In this photo the moon looks more like a sunburst for some reason.

 

 

 

 

The two photos above: Strawberry Moon, June 2024

 

Not my best selfie. Weird diagonal horizon!

 

 

The stars never really made much of an appearance. Should be no suprise, since a full moon will make the stars much less visible. So I decided to head home, feeling satisfied with my Strawberry Moon photos. Driving through the park, I couldn't resist a little detour. Have you ever wondered what driving the backroads of Joshua Tree National Park would be like at night in an open air Jeep with a full moon? If you answered yes, be sure to check out my video below. What the heck, go ahead and watch it even if you didn't answer yes! Oh, and I don't drive the back roads this fast. The video speed is set to 2X.

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Bird Skull Rock

 I've posted about Bird Skull Rock before, most recently in July of 2023. It's one of my favorite rock formations in Joshua Tree National Park, and it's oriented nicely for night photography. We arrived a bit before sunset and the sky was putting on a beautiful show!

 

 

 

 

8:13pm "blue hour" with small lights inside the "eyes".

8:41pm: Kind of eerie looking! Are you going to be staring at me all night like that??

The Milky Way will be up and in a good position around 1am, so we decide to try to get a few hours of sleep, and set our alarms for 12:45. I'm worried about the cloud cover that's been moving in and out might end up blocking our view of the MW. 

 

Beep beep beep... The alarm goes off and I'm not sure either of us got any sleep, but we tried!

Just a piece of the MW is visible, but even so, the combination of clouds and stars is beautiful! It's been a fun night, and we decide to try to get more sleep and hike back to the car in the morning (vs. hiking back around 2am in the dark). It turned out to be a good decision.

 

If the sky had been clear, here's what the Milky Way would have looked like:

I took this photo 7/2023.

 

Anyway, it turned out to be an exceptionally pretty sunrise, so glad we opted to spend the night!

 

Thanks for stopping by!!

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