So another good friend William drove up from San Diego to hang out with us yesterday. We were planning to head out to a place called Vasquez Rocks for some photography fun with Arlo and the elephant suit.

And in the time-honoured tradition of ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’, William said “Well, Joshua Tree is only 2 hrs away.” Jess was skeptical, which was fair enough since she was driving. But she was game, so we left. And then I had my first introduction to REAL Los Angeles traffic, and it took us 3.5 hours to get to Joshua Tree, and we got their with 15-20 minutes of light to spare.

William and Jess were both shooting film with Hasselblads and I had my dslr plus some film in the Mamiya. We took a couple of shots before Arlo took a fall and put his hands down right into a bush that had little tiny hairlike spines which got stuck in his palms. So then I spent the next five minutes picking them out while the sun set. Finally he was good to go so I started shooting with the Mamiya…and then he trod on a cluster of spines from a Jumping Cactus which went right through his little shoes and into his food.  That was pretty much it for me, down tools to tend to the poor boy.  Jess and William helped pull the spines out of his foot and then we picked out way through the cacti back to the car.

At least the trip home only took 2.5 hrs, I guess.

But, even though it was a 6 hour round trip (during which Arlo serenaded us with his brand new hit, The Drop Bear Song) and even though we only got 20 minutes there…. WOW.  What an amazing place.  It was so good to get out of the city and into the desert and see a completely different landscape.  The joshua trees were kinda prehistoric looking, the colours cast by the setting sun were just….wow.  I can’t wait to get my rolls of film developed, but since it’s my first film outing I’m a bit nervous.  We’ll see.  I plan to try and get them developed while I’m in New York next week.

Here are the couple of shots I got with the dslr, though.