Lately every trip I plan, I discover on Instagram. Even though there are tons of negatives regarding social media now a days, I believe that if we only focus on the positives the outcome is great! For example keeping contact with people you know that have separated ways, learning about the world of nowadays and expressing yourself by being free to reach out into the internet community and have exposure.
Recent trips I’ve made, such as boulder, tulum, havasupavi falls and now Joshua tree have all been inspired by instragram. And this is just a tiny list of the “saved folder posts” I have on my IG account under the “bucket list destination” folder.
A year ago I got married to #jessilaneveryday and we didn’t have the chance to go on our honeymoon because of work issues during our wedding dates. Back then, Jess told me that if we could we should make a short trip every year to celebrate our anniversaries… so Joshua Tree it was.
You may have heard of this magical place from the famous U2 album – Joshua Tree or by the famous models who post pictures before/after the Coachella festival in the Yuca valley area. This two mainstream forces plus the fact that Airbnb is making the world a more accesible place are making deserted spots such as Joshua tree more enjoyable and relatable to not hippie persons.
The plan was just to disconnect and enjoy nature. Recently we had the opportunity to camp in Havasupavi, and since Jess loved the felling of being within nature I wanted to jump right into it and keep the nature affection momentum going. I started looking around at Airbnb places near Joshua tree and it blew my mind how many authentic and breathtaking places there were. Unimaginable architectural pieces of art.
Jess best friend Vero and my good friend Andres joined the team in traveling to Joshua, so we booked an Airbnb place, booked the flight and the planning was on.
Planning a trip nowadays.
A great trip planning tool I’ve found recently is Airbnb Experiences… this tool lets you discover the place where you are traveling too in a not so touristic manner with locals, showing what locals do. I’m here I found two main attractions for the trip; a “natural hot spring” near the yuca valley and some motorcycle riding near Palm Springs. Another great tool I use nowadays to plan my trips is just following the # followed by the name of the place you are planning to visit on Instagram. In this case just search for #joshuatree and hit the follow button; after this every time somebody posts a picture with the # you followed it will pop up on your feed. And the last tools I use is the normal search engine google and YouTube platform to read blogs and watch videos regarding whichever place you are interested in going to.
We landed in the Palm Springs Airport which is truly amazing… 100% outdoors with the background of the stunning and beautiful San Jacinto mountains. Decided to have a bite and some drinks at an happy hour in Palm Springs before heading to Joshua Tree. Jess choose a chill rooftop with views towards the mountains in the “Azúcar” hotel and bar. Drinks where great and the atmosphere and ambience was amazing.
Next morning we had planned to do the motorcycle trip we had booked on Airbnb. It turns out that we did not read the notes from host and we did not have the motorcycle endorsement in our drivers license, so we couldn’t ride the bikes on the road. Luckily for us, Terry (our host) had 3 off roads bikes which he let us drive and had fun in the middle of the desert at a place call Ocotillo Wells. While we where riding bikes off road, the girls where out in the dessert art watching some sculptures in the middle of the dessert.
Some history based on what terry our host told us: “the saltón sea is the largest lake in California. The fun fact is that this lake is actually a product of a human mistake. Since this California area is so remote, arid and basically a desert valley the only way to populate this area was if they could get reliable water sources into this area. Back in the 1700’s they were trying to bring water from the Colorado River via acquaducts and by some human mistake the acquaduct broke and that’s how the lake formed”. Don’t know if it’s true or not, and didn’t take the time to confirm it on the internet, but that was our host story.
We then headed to Pionner Town to go and see artist Vera Sola at Pappy & Harriets. It’s a small cowboy town where they usually have live music from Thursday’s to Sunday’s. Keep in mind that it gets pretty packed, so plan ahead in getting there early if you intend to catch some music. The vibes from this place are amazing, and the band was even better. Only down side is that we weren’t able to eat here because of how packed it was, but Vera was amazing. Her style and music in my opinion suited perfectly the vibes of the location and town. We were tired by this time, headed back to our Airbnb had some bbq and wine watched the stars on those clear deserted nights and called it a day.
Next day early morning I decided to go out for a trail run. I decided to do some exploring inside the Joshua Tree National Park. I just wanted to do a not so long run, but the weather and views where just so perfect that without noticing in a matter of no time I had already ran 6miles. I decided to turn around, since I had still to run back up the way I came down and it was already late morning (the group back at the Airbnb was pissed, since I had taken the car to get to the national park). So I hurried my way back to the trailhead and got back home at around 11am after running almost 13 miles. Oh boy! How good it felt the longest run of the year so far! Luckily enough I chose the Boy Scout trail without knowing that it was actually the longest trail in the park.
Check out the strava segment of the Tun here: https://strava.app.link/4g7nFfm0xV
I picked the crew up and we headed back again into the national park. This time we went to hidden valley. A breathing valley of rocks in the middle of the park. We hiked up to one of the tallest rocks out there and just chilled and talked a lot about nature and how peaceful and beautifull being away from concrete jungles is. Time flew by and Jess and I had to rush to go to a couples hot spring activity I had booked through Airbnb experiences. So I left them at the bottom of Ryan’s mountain so the could submit it to watch the sunset while we were in our tiny honeymoon kinda hot spring.
Monarch hot springs is the name of it. Paul is the name of the Host, and even though we got there an hour late Paul was still waiting for us. At the beginning he was a little bit bitter and upset about us being one hour late, but as he said it was our money. Luckily, after speaking for some minutes Paul’s mood change drastically and he is actually a pretty cool dude. He chatted with us for 15 mins about live decisions, moving to different cities and having kids… and then he gave us some private time in his beautifull property.
We headed back to Joshua tree to pick up our group from Ryan’s mountain and decided to drive back down to Palm Springs to have dinner at “sushi and wiskey” a sushi place Paul had actually recommended to us. The sushi was good and the service even better. Will definitely try it again if ever back in the area.
For our last full day in Joshua tree we had planned to have breakfast at “Crossroads Cafe” and then rent some fat bikes at the local bike shop to go and ride the well known trail “section 6” and then just chill the rest of the day at our Airbnb to take advantage and enjoy all the amenities our Airbnb had (pin pin table, bbq, jacuzzi and hammock). Turns out that everything turned out great that day except for the bike part (my favorite one). It turns out the guy who owns the bike shop opened until 1pm on Saturday’s and was closed Sunday’s and Monday’s…. don’t know what to think or write about this, but anyhow, it messed up the plans for the day. We then went to wall mart to buy some salmon and burgers for dinner and just had an enormous amount of wine in the jacuzzi that afternoon and watched the sunset.
Finally for the day we were supposed to fly out LA we had planned to have lunch at In and Out Burgers and dinner at the best sushi place there is on earth “SUGARFISH”. We got to Santa Monica at around 3:30 pm and I decided to go for a quick run to Venice and then a quick splash in the Pacific Ocean. I met the crew at blue bottle coffee after my run, had a beer and then went back to Santa Monica in one of those Lyft scooters. Met back once more again with the crew at SUGARFISH where I had the “don’t think, just eat” menu… and oh boy! Was it good! I highly doubt I’ll ever find a better sushi place than this one ever….
it was the perfect ending to an awesome get away aniversary celebration with my #jessilaneveryday
MiBiCi Adventures 