We are really enjoying our family road trip! California has not disappointed us with its beauty. While planning our trip I became interested in exploring different national parks. Today we visited our first one of the trip, Joshua Tree and it was amazing!! I had always heard of Joshua tree but honestly, I had no idea it was a national park, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Below is a picture of just one of the amazing forms we discovered, the Granite Boulders. On our bus tour the guide began by describing how the park was formed. “Geologists believe the face of our modern landscape was born more than 100 million years ago. Molten liquid, heated by the continuous movement of Earth’s crust, oozed upward and cooled while still below the surface. These plutonic intrusions are a granitic rock called monzogranite.” He then went on to explain how the monzogranite formed into joints running horizontal, vertical and rectangular. This and erosion are what created the various rock formations throughout the park. The erosion process took millions of years and was assisted by a much wetter climate then the present one. The Granite Boulders were our last stop. They were impressive in size and it was hard to imagine how they got to where they lay today. We weren’t the only ones wondering so the guide explained to us how they came to be “After the arrival of the arid climate of recent times, flash floods began washing away the protective ground surface. As they were exposed, the huge eroded boulders settled one on top of another, creating those impressive rock piles we see today.” Though we had no idea what to expect, we left in amazement and awe. Mother nature is amazing!
Refrences
National Parks Service (2017). Geological Formations. Retrieved
from: https://www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/nature/geologicformations.htm
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