the hi-Desert

One of the greatest things about Los Angeles is how easy it is to leave Los Angeles. I know that sounds funny coming from me, a person who has been writing about her love affair of this city for over 5 years now. (6 years in January) The thing I love about this city is how easy it is to be somewhere completely different in a blink of an eye. I think I have been able to show you some of these places via this here blog and I hope you have had fun traveling along with me.

This October I had my heart set on going to the desert to catch the annual High Desert Test Sites event. Which basically uses the desert as a gallery space from Pioneertown to outside of 29 Palms, which is approximately 30 miles. Interspersed in this area are places with sculpture installations, performance art (or charades for adults, as my dad calls it) and whole lot of sand.

My friend and I hit town just in time to grab a map at the HDTS headquarters. They also had gluten free fudge cookies waiting for me, they must have known I was coming. Actually they did know, the event planner was more recently an intern in my department at work. Nice to see all of the amazing things my co-workers do in their free time.

Our first stop was the World Famous Crochet Museum Gospel Revival, and they sang and they wore crocheted garments and they revived and made me feel the lord and made me, like a good catholic, feel guilty about not crocheting more. And with that guilt and the increasing degrees we left after 20 minutes or so to grab margaritas with another co-worker of mine in Pioneertown.

I had never been to the Joshua Tree area before, I had heard that it was beautiful, but I guess I wasn't prepared for how amazing it was. Rocks precariously perched on other rocks, abandoned houses, Joshua trees of course, cloudless periwinkle skies, I think we got out twice for photo shoots in the 4 miles it took us to get to Pioneertown.

So after our brief time of being artsy ourselves we found ourselves at a biker bar, Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace, in the middle of the desert. And lucky for us, there was a biker rally in Palm Springs, only 20 minutes away. We pulled in and it was a vast sea of Harley's, leather and bandanas. There were biker babes in bikinis and they had definitely seen better days.

Here is a photo of our waitress, Flo, no seriously her name is Flo. When my friend had some questions on the menu and then settled on the burger and a side salad, Flo in her most surly annoyed voice said "Let me guess Bal-Sam-ick" and she was like that the rest of our stay and it was pretty fantastic.

The drinks were stiff and I was half hoping to see a bar fight, but no suck luck.

We ended our day in Desert Hot Springs in the hotel's mineral pools. Not too shabby for a night in the desert.