Column: With warmer weather, Joshua Tree National Park beckons again

The weather was so unsettled in March that I postponed my annual trip to Joshua Tree, where it was even colder than it was here. Rather than travel, my primary birthday-month activities were 1) shivering and 2) wringing out my socks.

With the forecast calling for a sunny and warm Easter weekend, though, the timing felt right. I booked a cheap motel and headed east in my trusty Fiat for my first overnight trip in months. Gangway!

This was my third visit to Joshua Tree. I like it.

For starters, the landscape is compelling, especially in the national park, which is primarily dirt, rocks and scrubby plants, including picturesque Joshua trees.

In the commercial districts of Joshua Tree and its neighboring communities, quirky shops and galleries add flavor, and many restaurants have eclectic fare. If you are vegetarian or vegan, you would not starve. Even the old-school diners have soyrizo hash on their menus to keep up.

The people-watching is amusing. Probably half the people I saw were under 30, White and decorated with tattoos, including a high percentage of men wearing manbuns.

At breakfast one morning at the Country Kitchen, the young couple at the next table spent an agonizing amount of time quizzing a server who patiently answered their finicky questions. I refrained from turning around and saying, “Will you for pete’s sake just order?”

But I like that I can get pesto on my eggs, or a puffy, bakery-made English muffin. Or that a street corner would have flyers posted in support of abortion rights and trans rights.

The art and music scene seems lively. I saw a flyer for a band named Alien Probe and for another named Anna Phylactic and the Shocks. One night as I walked past the art gallery La Matadora, a female rock trio, JackRabbit, was performing outside. They were good.

These are small towns with a difference. They’re also in danger of being loved to death as they are overrun by weekenders and entitled visitors.

At the Frontier Cafe in Yucca Valley, the tip jar bears this message: “Don’t just be a hipster, be a tipster.” (It was nearly full. Guilt does wonders.) A sticker in the window of Mike’s Liquor in Joshua Tree reads in part: “Welcome to Joshua Tree. Now please leave and take your trash and someone with you.”

Can’t blame any locals for being resentful. I hope I am the type of visitor Joshua Tree likes, or at least tolerates: respectful, curious and poor. I patronized area businesses, including a Mexican restaurant in Yucca Valley, El Guero, and made sure to be a tipster as well as a hipster.

And rather than take out a personal loan to go glamping, I stayed at a locally owned budget motel, where three nights cost less than one night in a boutique Airstream trailer camp.

The trade-off was prison-quality toilet paper and a balky shower that got me damp rather than actually wet. I might have overdone it on the “budget” part.

Joshua Tree National Park is the main reason to visit. You drive the paved road into its vastness and find small lots or pullouts in which to stop and go exploring.

I went looking for the humorously named Wall Street Mill, the remains of a gold processing operation by that name that dates to 1928. It’s a mile walk from the parking lot and first takes you past the rusting wrecks of a couple of antique vehicles.

The trail is so lightly marked that it’s hard to know if you’re heading in the right direction. I commiserated with two women who had paused on the trail.

“I guess that’s a windmill,” said one, pointing to a small tower. She joked: “Unless it’s a cell tower.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I can’t get a signal.”

A small group on their return trip assured us we would soon come to the mill.

And we did. It’s not much to look at, a big metal box with a kind of conveyor track leading inside, the whole thing falling apart and rightly fenced off. But it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. A placard says: “It is a complete gold ore crushing mill featuring late 19th century two-stamp mill machinery.”

Also, it’s in the middle of nowhere, so there’s that.

I ate lunch at a picnic area in the park’s Hidden Valley. I’d picked up items from The Dez, a fancy provisions shop, but also used a trick from my previous visits. A box of leftover pizza from Sky High Pie was placed open faced on my dashboard in the 80-degree heat.

While I ate my fresh items in the shade atop a rock, and read a novel (Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson”), my pizza reheated naturally. I checked on it once and let it bake longer.

After a half hour, I can’t say the pizza was hot, but it was warm. And my car smelled like cheese.

The next morning, I went to the park’s Indian Cove Nature Trail, which I’d enjoyed last year. Getting to it involves a dusty, rough road, but my Fiat got there in one piece.

Out on the trail, the only sounds were my hiking shoes crunching the dirt and my sling pack bouncing against my back. I paused. The air was almost completely silent. Then natural sounds came into sharp relief.

Birds, a couple of different types, called. (Birds can always get a signal.)

I heard a snatch of human conversation from somewhere in the distance. Later, as I passed by a thorny-looking bush, it seemed to be humming. I took a look. It was being pollinated by dozens of bees.

The desert may seem desolate, but it’s not.

Needless to say, it was a great little vacation. I should have a couple more columns about it coming up: an update on some favorite spots and a profile of a bookseller.

My last two days in Joshua Tree, it was sunny and 85 degrees. Since I got home, we’ve had another bout of March: colder than normal, overcast and wet.

April, like a glimpse of an oasis in the desert, may have been a mirage.

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Joshua Tree’s so-called Invisible House, whose mirrored exterior is designed to blend into the landscape, got worldwide publicity in January after being listed for sale for a local record of $18 million. Did I see the Invisible House during my visit? Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. It’s impossible to say.

David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, where he is all too visible. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.