This is part one of a three part series about a day trip to Joshua Tree in November. Our family happens to own a cabin in Joshua Tree, so we wanted to check out how it was doing. I’d never been to the property site nor to the Joshua Tree National Park, but I was ready for an adventure with little to no internet, on rugged terrain, and with lots of time spent in the car with my aunt, uncle, dad, and grandpa.
Dear Adventure Avenue,
It was a rainy morning in Orange County, but Joshua Tree was forecasted to be ‘dry as a bone’. We left the house around 7:30 and began the drive to Joshua Tree. We passed by many different landscapes from industrial to residential to winding two lane freeway and a wind farm.
The landscape and the weather began to change once we made it out of the hills and into the desert. We were greeted by adobe buildings, bleached from the sun. We became more and more removed from civilization as we made our way to our plot. The houses became smaller and fewer in number.
Then we had to make a turn onto a dirt road. Asphalt was only for those on the main drive. We crept at a snail’s pace in our car, which was definitely not capable of four wheel drive. There was no mistaking that we were in the desert. There was sand as far as the eye could see except for a hill speckled with growth. Tires secured in the sand marked roads that looked even worse than the road we were crawling along.
We began seeing signs of life as we grew nearer the property. Chain link fences surrounded several of the tiny houses we passed. A fire hydrant down the road told us we could one day have access to water.
Our GPS had all but stopped working, so we relied on the map my dad had printed out. We have neighbors across the street as it turns out. Trash cans in front of the house suggested they were able to get trash service, even as far out as we were.
We pulled into a slip that constituted something like the side of the road and a curb and exited the car. The desert air nipped my face, but as I breathed in the cold air, it was clear.
We walked up the drive to the cabin site. Tire tracks marked the would-be driveway illustrating that while we may not have been here lately, someone else had been, and it became apparent as to what they had been doing.
To be continued…
A
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