A Fiat really must be foreign in Joshua Tree
Comments about my Joshua Tree columns were warm, matching the desert’s spring temperatures. That mini-vacation in the town, with visits to the national park, exceeded my expectations, possibly helped by my expectations being low — and the first day beginning so inauspiciously.
I got off to a late start that became even later when, at lunch in Ontario, I realized I’d forgotten my phone charger and felt compelled to backtrack west to get it, losing an hour. In retrospect, it’d have been faster to go to Target for a new one. What can I
say: Like most of you, I’m out of practice traveling.
At 4:30 p.m., about two hours later, I pulled in to Joshua Tree and parked at my budget motel. Checking in introduced the matter of communicating with the motel desk clerk through plexiglass and masks. He asked the make of my car. Me: “Fiat.”
Him: “Rio?”
Me, enunciating: “Feeaht.”
Him: “Prius?”
Me, sighing: “Eff-eyeay-tee,” drawing an F in the air with my finger.
Him, brightly: “Oh: Kia!”
Me, helplessly: “Noooo. Fiat.”
Him, pushing a pen and paper through the slot: “Write it down.”
I did so and pushed the paper back. He looked blankly at the note for long seconds, during which I wondered if he was not even going to be able to read my block printing. Finally: “Oh, Fiat!”
Oh, brother. But yes. By this point, there was nowhere to go but up — which is precisely how the rest of the trip went off. All the hitches were out of the way early.
Now, about your reactions. Joshua Tree, either the town or the national park, has a lot of fans, as does the Morongo Basin in general.
Bob Beberfall of Ontario and his wife visit the national park annually, usually in December or January, and log 20,000 steps a day. People 62 and older, like them, can get lifetime passes good for every
U.S. national park for a mere $80 — although he bought his back when it was a mind-boggling $10. In any event, they get in for free.
“Getting to the park early, around 6:30 a.m., is the best as it is very quiet and we get to see some animals, such as coyotes and bighorn sheep,” Beberfall says.
Richard Rorex of Apple Valley, who has a transplanted Joshua tree in his front yard, says he believes there are only two places on Earth where Joshua trees (Yucca Brevifolia) are native, the high desert of California and Israel. He has seen them both places.
“I can’t believe you have lived in the Inland Empire as long as you have and are just making your maiden voyage to Joshua Tree,” exclaims Lori Haage of Ontario. A few other readers were similarly stunned.
Hey, for Friday’s column I made my maiden voyage to Highland. My reputation for intrepidness may be overrated.
Anyway, Haage says that as the daughter of a high school teacher — Robert Haage of Chaffey and Montclair — the family had to find ways to entertain itself at a low cost. That included camping.
“We always went to Joshua Tree for Easter,” Haage relates. “As the eldest daughter, I fondly remember hiding Easter eggs among the Joshua trees and up on the many boulders.”
Dave Freeman delights in Joshua Tree’s other rock formations, the musical kind: Gram Parson and Keith Richards getting high and looking for UFOs, the sounds of Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal and Gram Rabbit. “A lot of great creative minds convene in the desert to make art,” Freeman concludes.
Speaking of music, Theodore Lehrer makes the inevitable U2 joke: “Joshua Tree is a difficult park to navigate.
The streets there have no name.”
Jo Anne McKaughan of Upland and her husband recently visited the desert for an unconventional but timely reason. “Curiously, we were only able to score our second Pfizer in Joshua Tree,” she says. “We bought our lunch at the Yucca Hookah, and the gyros there were pretty good.”
My follow-up column about Raven’s Bookshop in Twentynine Palms drew comment from as far away as Orange County. Two readers behind the Orange Curtain were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the bookstores and literary community in Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms.
“They are blessed with more independent booksellers along that stretch of Highway 62 that my entire densely populated county, it seems,” Kent Wilson writes. Of Raven’s Bookshop in Twentynine Palms, he adds, “That little store adds richness to the already interesting arts community out in that beautiful basin.”
And Mike Vail, a writer who has a second home in Twentynine Palms, drew my attention to the Morongo Basin’s not one but two literary anthologies, Howl and Cholla Needles, and its pre-COVID-19 outdoor author readings.
Writer Marilyn Collier of Twentynine Palms says her small city is “a wonderful place to live and create” and recommends the Old Schoolhouse Museum, for which she volunteers.
About Raven’s Bookshop, Collier says owner Patty O’Toole “has done an amazing job of remodeling and yet retaining a true treasure in Twentynine Palms” and expresses the hope that I’ll visit the city again.
It’s likely I will. Although first I may go back to Highland.
brIEfly
Date palms aren’t just in Indio. Jim Rose tells me he recently saw dropped dates from the palm trees at Upland’s Foothill Boulevard and Benson Avenue next to, of all things, a vac & sew shop. He took them to a vendor at the Claremont Farmers Market, Coachella-based Fernandez Dates, who identified them as Deglet Noor dates, said to be “the most popular date in the United States.” I am delighted to learn that a whiff of desert exoticism graces one of the City of Gracious Living’s most mundane corners.