Friday, May 11th – Sunday, May 13th, 2018

Joshua Tree- a national park with a bunch of cool looking rocks that have their history written all over them. Not to mention all the happy-looking trees! Trees with much personality, from the baby ones to the big old ones; the upright and proper as well as lazy and hungover- but all with their branches of fuzzy little brushes waving hi at the sun. At least that’s how I see them. Victor just describes them as really stupid-looking. The poor trees.

A rock-climber friend had asked us before our trip, “Wait- why are *you guys* going there?” Uh.. “I dunno, drive around?” Admittedly, it was a pretty valid question to ask non-rock-climbers. We allotted a day and a half for it, but turned out a day was enough for us to visit most of the highlights we had planned. Because to be honest, it was all very.. similar looking. The difference being that this rock looks like a skull, that one more a penguin (actually, we couldn’t find that one), that one we deemed an octopus/water slide/dogs doing it (to which we settled upon because thank you dear, I just can’t unsee it), but you get the gist of it. I guess the little toilet brush Joshua trees with only one branch brought some amusing variety to the Joshua trees as well. But we didn’t need the extra half day; it turned out to be quite a long commitment to drive in and out of the park and there were only a couple popular rocks we weren’t able to check off our list, i.e. arch, split, and cap rocks.

What we were able to see though, we enjoyed. To name them in a list, there was the Hidden Valley Nature Trail, Barker Dam, and Wall Street Mill. The sights were all very conveniently packaged into short 1 or 2 mile round trip hikes, at most. It was all very convenient for us, given how tired we were coming in straight from a drive from LAX after a red-eye flight, that and also his ankle was still healing. We also got to put our 4 wheel drive into use on the Geology Tour Road. The paper guide we got from the visitor center for this “tour” was highly informative about how the rocks came to be, would recommend.

I have some fun stories to tell about our day though. The first of which is- what kind of a boyfriend sticks you with a cactus prick? That’s right, my boyfriend. He plucked a spike off of one and inched it dangerously close to my arm as I struggled. This next part, I kid you not, I actually remember thinking: sigh, I guess I’ll stop and trust him. And immediately after, we both see the spike prick my skin. Oops.

My face: (o_o). His face (o_o).

It didn’t hurt. I just got a kick out of taking pictures of my arm and his guilty face afterwards. Heh.

For my next memorable note, we got somewhat lost on a trail. I mean, they call these trails but they really aren’t marked that well and all the small paths look the same to me. At least at no point did we feel like we were really in danger, like it turned out other people weren’t too far away. But speaking as someone with no sense of direction, I shouldn’t do these things alone. There was one point, maybe on a different hike, where he tested me on which way was out? I gave it a few thoughts, then pointed unknowingly further into the park. I got the -__- face as he turned around and started walking in the right direction.

My last story is about our note-worthy stroke of luck in the park. Mid-day we were supposed to meet a friend at a pre-determined time and place. The catch is that there was no signal in this park and he was meeting us straight from a morning of flying then driving from LA. After decent time had passed and no friend, Victor checks his phone and I guess we had miraculously gotten signal earlier because there was a message with an updated ETA. How lucky we got that message. Some time passed after the 2nd ETA though, and we decide to do a short hike, except our friend wouldn’t recognize our rental car at the meeting spot! So boyfriend had a great idea to display our hoodies with our company logos in the car. Lol! Coming from SF, of course we were wearing company hoodies, and who knew that’d be useful. When we got back and he still hadn’t arrived, we finally figured it was time to leave. Who knows how we’re going to sort out the rest of our day now. Right then, stroke of luck #2 happened, our friend drives right in to meet us, nice!

To end our day at Joshua Tree, we went south, chasing the sunset at Cholla Cactus Garden. Though we just barely caught the light left in the sky, the cactus garden was still beautiful to see. It’s a very unique sight in the middle of complete nothingness for miles around it.

Instead of going back into Joshua Tree the second day, we stopped by Palm Springs on our way back to LA. This rotating tram up the mountain was apparently something people did so up we went. It was rather pricey and I’ve been up these kinds of things before, so I was prepared to be underwhelmed. But it was actually kinda cool. Like, it rotated. And the scenery was pretty. At the top, there’s Mt. San Jacinto State Park, which I didn’t know until I got there! As we walked around, it occurred to us it felt just like we were in Tahoe.. we travelled all this way just to experience.. Tahoe. My favorite part here was how the lovely scent of the Jeffrey pine tree just hits your nose by surprise. We kept walking up to trees and sniffing them looking for more. We indeed looked very silly.

After lunch at a place that served boiled-in-bag Cajun shellfish AND bubble tea (what?! that is amazing), we drove back to LA.

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Our second LA trip together was much different from the first. Since we had already hit up all the typical checklist items in our first trip, we got to take it slow our second time around and try things we normally wouldn’t go for.

Like The Broad, LA’s contemporary art museum. We don’t normally go to art museums because we just don’t get it. There are many insta-worthy exhibitions here, if that’s your kind of thing. The infinity room was wowee, but you only get 15sec inside. We also saw a play, “Soft Power”, another thing we don’t typically do. I thought it was an ambitious play with a talented cast and a thought-provoking idea at its core. Yet at the same time, much of it escaped me as I have very little experience in interpreting plays, and I left not too sure what my conclusion was supposed to be.

One activity more up our alley was comedy. That one night we had in LA, we stood in line at the Westside Comedy Theater in a tucked away alley of Santa Monica. Waiting in this almost dingy side street, we talked about how beautiful people are in this city and how well they dressed. We talked about rent and whether we could see ourselves living in this city. I pointed out a guy in front of us and how boyfriend would have to swap out tech hoodies for pineapple print shirts like the one that dude was wearing. We laughed at the thought of it. The comedy show I really enjoyed. I loved the low-key and comfortable feel of the place, and the show itself consisted of a fun, probably seasoned cast with moments I still find memorable.

From laptop movies in the hotel to naps in our car by the garden, we really did take it slow. We spent a whole lazy afternoon in a booth at Hunan Maojia. As usual, we over-ordered for the two of us. But the food was quite good, we didn’t have much better to do anyway, plus the restaurant was empty, so we took our time eating- casually picking for fish meat, and my- how delicate this tofu! When was the last time I didn’t eat to be finished with eating?

Just a three day, compact and productive trip. Got another stamp in the national park passport book- yes! Started very busy on a tight schedule but wound down to a more relaxing pace. SoCal, it is always nice to see you. Until next time.