Palm Springs and Joshua Tree

Over the long weekend, Alison and I took a road trip to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park. We headed out on Friday night after work. Since we knew we couldn’t leave until we wrapped up work we didn’t want to do the full 10-hour drive. Instead, we drove to Las Vegas and stayed overnight. That way when we woke up on Saturday we could hit the road and we only had a 4ish hour drive ahead of us. We did opt to take the slightly longer and potentially more scenic route through the Mojave National Preserve. This route goes right by Joshua Tree National Park and follows part of the historic route 66. This route added 10-15 minutes to our drive. We hit 50,000 miles on our car during this leg of our drive. We originally bought this car in December 2015. It is a great car and should have a lot of life left.

We arrived in Palm Springs around noon. We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant – The Grill on Main. We both had incredibly delicious street tacos. California has the best street tacos.

After lunch, we checked into our hotel. We are staying at the La Quinta Resort and Club. This is a Hilton property. It used to be branded as a Waldorf Astoria hotel but was recently reclassified into the Curio collection. This is a better fit. This hotel is quite beautiful, but not quite as luxurious as a Waldorf hotel. The hotel is quite charming and historic. Originally opened in 1926, society leaders, financial giants, movie stars, and political leaders, as well as many regular folks, have sought rest, relaxation, and privacy in this beautiful desert setting surrounded by the Santa Rosa mountains. It is known as the “Gem of the Desert.” Alison was interested in staying here because she watched a season of the Bachelorette, which was filmed here. I was intrigued because Matthew McConaughey wrote about staying here in his book, Greenlights. The hotel is located right up against the Santa Rosa mountains. It is surrounded by golf courses. There are a ton of pools scattered across the property, as well as, abundant green space. The rooms are a series of small cottages. There is also shopping and dining located at the center of the hotel. Our room was in one of the small cottages near the center of the resort. We were near the putting green and the adults-only pool area. The room was spacious and had a fireplace - which we loved.

Saturday was a resort day. Once we were settled in our room, we explored the resort. We loved the beautiful fruit trees and flowers planted around the resort. We found an area with giant lawn games, I kind of wanted to play chess, but Alison wasn’t up for it. Instead, we played a few rousing games of Connect 4. 

We had massages scheduled in the afternoon. The La Quinta resort has a large and luxurious spa. It included steam rooms, beautiful lounge spaces, saunas, and more. We each had a massage. The service here was incredible. My masseuse was incredible. Usually, I am not much of a talker during the massage, but she was such an interesting person that we chatted for most of the 90-minute massage. It was a very enjoyable experience.

After our massages, Alison and I freshened up back at our hotel room. We spent some time enjoying the fireplace in our hotel room before our dinner reservations. We ate at the resort’s signature restaurant – Morgan’s in the Desert. It was fantastic. We both started with the cream of mushroom soup. This is not usually the dish we would start our meal with, but it came highly recommended by our waitress. It was delectable. For our main courses, Alison had scallops (one of her favorite dishes) and I had a steak. Both were excellent. We finished our meal with a peanut butter chocolate mousse. This restaurant hit all the right notes – the food was delicious, the service was impeccable, and the atmosphere was a nice blend of romantic and historic.

On Sunday we woke up and headed to Joshua Tree National Park. It is located around 30 miles from our hotel. We entered from the south side of the park. This is the less popular side and there are fewer landmarks/points of interest on this side of the park. It took a bit of driving for us to really get to the more interesting portion of the park. It really was a pleasant early morning drive.

Our first stop was the Cholla Cactus Garden. I figured this would be an interesting stop, but I was blown away by how amazing it was. There was so much more cacti here than I could have imagined. As soon as we drove into the area it was evident we had arrived. We parked and walked around admiring the cacti. They were particularly beautiful in the early morning light.

We continued into the park. We did some hiking through the desert to an interesting rock formation. There are giant rock formations all throughout Joshua Tree. This particular rock formation is notable for arch rock. We climbed up on Arch Rock and found a nearby rock to sit and enjoy the beautiful day. It was a little chilly, although it warmed up the longer the sun was out, and it was as clear as could be. I couldn’t imagine much better weather to enjoy Joshua Tree.

Next, we drove out of the park to the community of Twentynine Palms. We stopped by the visitors center looking for restrooms. Restrooms were hard to come by in Joshua Tree. There were some at the visitors center. Twentynine Palms seemed like a nice community. We stopped by a beautiful old catholic church – it was a white adobe building and looked quite stunning.

In this section of the park, there were lots of Joshua Trees. Many were huge and looked super gnarly. It wasn’t really a thick forest, but it was clear why this park is named after the tree. A fun fact we learned about Joshua Trees is that legend has it they were named by the Mormon pioneers, either because the trees are reaching up in supplication, or because they represent the saints taking over the desert. Also, scientists believe Joshua trees have a lifespan of 150 years, and some live much longer. So some of these trees would have been here when pioneers came through this area. That was kind of cool to think about.

Our next stop was another rock formation. This one is popular because of one rock, dubbed Skull rock. It really does look like a skull. This area was fairly crowded. We took a picture of the rock and then found a trail and headed toward Jumbo rocks. The trail was nice and quiet. You could say it was a “walk through the desert”, which is an inside joke that Alison and I kept referencing throughout the day. It originated from the book, Subpar Parks: America’s Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors, which I got for Alison for Christmas. We highly recommend reading this hilarious book. After visiting Jumbo rocks we went looking for a picnic spot. We found a picnic table, but it wasn’t that great, so instead, we just ate in our car. We packed the fixing for sandwiches and some snacks. We knew the food would be hard to come by in the park.

Next, we wanted to hike to the summit of Ryan mountain. However, the park was quite busy at this point. Winter is the busy season in Joshua Tree because the temperatures in the summertime are unbearable. This is why we always start our day early. We had an amazing morning with very few crowds. That early morning time is so precious. Because of the crowds we were having a difficult time finding a parking spot near the Ryan mountain trailhead. We eventually found a spot about a mile away. We wanted to do the hike so we felt like it was worth adding an extra mile each way. Ryan Mountain is a moderate 3-mile roundtrip hike with ~1000 feet of elevation gain (5 miles for us since we had to park so far away). The hike was challenging and fun. The summit is one of the highest points in the park. From the top, we could see forever. 

After we made it back to our car we tried to visit the hall of horrors, but it was too crowded. Instead, we visited another viewpoint – Keys View. This viewpoint is located in the Little San Bernardino Mountains and overlooks the Coachella Valley. From here we could see Palm Springs and beyond. I loved the panoramic views. The drive out and back was nice too. There were some pretty impressive Joshua trees along the way.

At that point, we had accomplished everything we wanted in the park. We had a long drive back out of the park. We covered a lot of ground. Since we stopped along the way we didn’t really realize how far we had come. It took us almost an hour to get back to the south entrance.

Back at the hotel we changed into our swimsuits and relaxed in the hot tub and heated pool near our room. It was a great way to end the day, especially after hiking. This night we had dinner at the Adobe Grill. This was another resort restaurant. It had decent Mexican food. The restaurant expanded out to take over the main courtyard of the restaurant. It was such a pleasant place to have a meal. We were sitting next to a water fountain and a firepit. There was also live music. It was a great locale for a meal.

The next morning we woke up and said farewell to Palm Springs. I flew my drone and tried to capture a little bit of the sunrise. Then we ate a big breakfast at a resort restaurant before hitting the road. We had about a 9.5-hour drive ahead of us. We made a great time. We only stopped a few times for gas and food. We left the hotel at 8am and pulled into Daybreak at 6:30pm. The drive wasn’t bad at all. This was such a fun road trip weekend. We would 100% road trip to Palm Springs in the future.