Description: Wherein Marty and Heather visit Joshua Tree National Monument, and Pioneertown.
(Marty's Report):
We picked the High Desert Motel because it was right outside the park entrance to Joshua Tree, and because it was cheap, very cheap. The sun came up early and big, unapologetically dumping sunlight all over the terrain, without any messing about with slant angles or delicate morning hues.
We decided to get breakfast and then head into the park for the day, so we hit the Natural Sisters Cafe (just down from the dinner place of last night), another place servicing the out-of-town progressives, and in-town hippie fragments of the local population. Decent food, and nice little patio to sit on. Got to psychoanalyze a mother and daughter sitting nearby, making use of my recent body-reading training. Given the dessicated and self-centered quality of the mother, my clinical conclusion was, "Poor daughter."
We headed into the park, which, as it turned out, was on a free day (Veteran's Day), so we cruised on in and made a first stop at Hidden Valley, which was a maybe half-mile round collection of large rocks that supposedly used to harbor rustled cattle. We walked the loop and watched some climbers doing top roped, and maybe 2 pitch climbs (a pitch being the length of a climbing rope, so less than about 150 feet). We bouldered up a little hill (me nicking my hand on the unforgiving rock), and looked out over the space. Again, it felt small, where two decades ago, in my youngish man period, it had seemed huge. Strange: where I had felt smaller than it in college, now I felt larger.
Then we drove up to a place called Keys View, after Heather nixed the Lost Horse Mine trail, which I had walked at least twice before, once with Mike and Pat and Mike (in college). I had stopped at the mine and they had gone further, to get the view of the Salton Sea, which I now realized was a low-grade regret, one of few in my life. But from Keys View, we could get a wide, expansive view of the surrounding area, though it was smogged in and didn't give up much detail. Ten minutes squinting out into the haze and I felt complete, and we moved on back down the hill, heading towards a flat hike at Barker Dam.
(I did a bit of research on the Salton Sea later this night, and found out that it was an ecological disaster site, a "sea" created by a botched hydrological effort in 1905. It developed a resort economy for a while, though the sea had no outlet so it was poisoning itself over time, and is apparently now visited mostly by documentarians of the apocalypse.)
We walked out to the dam, through the rich brown and red hues of the sandstone rocks, to the titular dam, a little cement wall that backs up maybe ten acres of water behind it...when there's water. It was built by cattlemen in 1900, then raised by a man named Keys in the 50's (we read a marker that said he had gone to jail for five-ish years for shooting a neighbor, and had a ranch in the park). We watched a butterfly twittering around the dry pond bed, and wondered if we were lending to its demise by making it fly around trying to get away from the gawkers. On the dam itself, there was graffiti from recent years, carved into the cement, which is not surprising, given all the graffiti we saw carved into ancient tombs in Egypt, from European travelers. Apparently has a tradition, but still a dick-head thing to do.
On the way out, we saw petroglyphs on the protected upper slanted surface of a scooped out rock. One of those exhibits which they mark and protect, and which you're therefore obliged to visit, but which you stand in front of for a few minutes, maybe take a picture, and then wander off.
The highlight of leaving the park was the coyote walking along the road. Cars were stopped for seemingly no reason, and as we slowed down, we saw why. A beautiful coyote was across the street, and as the other car sped off, we had him all to ourselves to photograph and admire. He looped around the car, and was close on my side, looking like a being who is used to eating others, and a little non-plussed at seeing himself outclassed. But still hopeful.
I had thought in the morning that we could go stay at a place called Pioneertown, just some miles west, thinking that it would spice up this leg of the journey. But as we discussed it prior to leaving the room, it did look more of a hassle than anything else (the bar-concert dive, Pappy and Harriets, that drew most people there was closed on Tuesdays). But coming out of the park in the afternoon, we thought it would be (as my grandma would might have said) "a hoot" to go visit.
We got some really heavy Mexican food, then, fortified/engorged, drove through Yucca Valley (which compared to 29 Palms and Joshua Tree was a modern metropolis), and a jog north through craggy outcroppings that sheltered the desert version of Yucca Valley's suburb, and pulled into Pioneertown, a strange little leftover of Hollywood. See, some Hollywood characters (including Roy Rogers) developed the place in the 1940's as a permanent set for movies, of which about 200 were filmed there. Now it's a very odd place with a fictional reconstruction of the old west, but lived in with real people and a couple shops (some well-intended but sad pottery), and a found-art installation in front of someone's house. It was quiet, to be sure, and only a few other people walked about, looking a little bemused/disoriented. Still, you get bragging rights.
It was about dark when we got back to the High Desert Hotel, and wanted to get something at the cafe and work on our computers. So we walked the half-mile or so along the highway, in a town without street lights and where no one seems to walk. We found an art gallery with a quail, who we dubbed the Brail Quail (see picture for why), and a large concrete tortoise. The cafe served us some tea and food, and we hung with the locals, in for the end-of-the-day repast, with the young staff, before heading back to our temporary lodgings.
(Heather's Report):
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