Joshua Tree National Park, CA

Greetings Steemians,

My girlfriend ( @joaniepie ) and I decided to take an impromptu trip to Joshua Tree National Park in California for a day during the 4th of July weekend. Our original plan was to get to the park around 7 PM to catch the sunset and have a nice picnic. We wanted to enjoy the stars for a few hours and leave around midnight, but plans definitely changed upon arriving!

The drive took longer than expected, since upon arriving the the outskirts of Joshua Tree, it was already 7:45 PM and getting deeper into the park for the sites took another 20-30 minutes. At this point, there was not much sunlight to enjoy.

As the sunset, I was able to capture the below photo, which has much darker lighting.

Soon, nightfall came and brought an ominous tone throughout the park.

As soon as the sun disappeared in the night, the stars begin to shine brightly. Joshua Tree is miles away from civilization, so there were no city lights to drown out the stars in the sky.

Unfortunately, we did not capture any photos of the sky at night, since I'm still learning about photography and realized later that I could have lowered the shutter speed on TV mode to capture the brightness of the sky.

We decided to stay overnight and crash in the car since we did not have camping gear. Around 1 AM, the moon set and the sky lit up even more than before with the constellations. We were easily able to see the Milky Way and the Big Dipper.

We woke up at 5 AM as the sun was rising to see what type of photos we could capture.

All in all, the trip was a success.

Joshua Tree National Park is definitely worth checking out. There are plenty of hiking trails, sites and campgrounds. I would advise not to be too active mid day and afternoon, because the heat is excruciating!

Photos taken using Canon EOS Rebel T6 EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II Lens + EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Lens.

Hope you enjoyed!

Cheers,
@brianjuice