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Joshua Tree National Park, California
Strange shrubs & stone stacks
Named and best known for a large and distinctive local plant, Joshua Tree National Park is also rife with unique rock formations that look as if someone carefully stacked smooth boulders on top of great monoliths. Was this the work of giants? Gods? Ancient aliens armed with rock tumblers?No, it turns out good old (very, very old) geology explains it all. Joshua Tree sits right on the cusp of a huge tectonic plate that was shoved upward by an even bigger plate hundreds of millions of years ago. The friction created enough heat to melt rock into magma, which soon cooled and then cracked under pressure. Eons of erosion washed away softer surrounding sediment and rounded the sharp edges of the fractured granite. As they were slowly exposed to fresh air, they settled in place to create curious stone stacks like these.

Which national park is this? Hint: It's named for those strange shrubs at the center of our photo.