Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park

It's 1:07 am and I am supposed to be sleeping and resting for school tomorrow but I just woke up and started remembering the second leg of our roadtrip. Instead of fighting my jet lag I will try to write down a few of the little moments that are zapping around in my head right now.

Going to Joshua Tree Park was my dream. It wasn't really on our route between Los Angeles and San Francisco but somehow going to the desert had become a fixed idea. It was a lot of extra driving but I am so glad we did. Here are some of the things that made it worthwile:

• eating lunch on top of a flat rock that was situated perfectly in the shade while looking into a valley of joshua trees and observing the ants carry away the crumbs of our nachos and guacamole.

• singing along to Tom Schilling's Major Tom with Antonia and it giving it our all while driving through this otherwordly vastness of the desert.



• looking for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat and ending up driving for a total of 30 miles because apparently there are no coffee shops in Twentynine Palms. The closest one we finally found in Joshua Tree turned out to be this hippy new age store where everything seemed more spacey than it needed to be. The coffee and the cake were good though.

• driving down the freeway for only about two miles to get to the Rib Co. for an amazing dinner of whiskey glazed ribs and burgers. We were probably the only non native English speakers there but it felt as if we belonged.

• sitting at the edge of the hot tub in the dark of the desert and gazing at the starry sky while soaking our feet and feeling the remaining warmth of the day on the still warm ground.

• eating an improvised breakfast on the curb of the road next to the Cholla Cactus garden and then learning about the cactii on the shortest hike ever (400m ;-).

• walking around Hidden Valley with Antonia and breaking the speed record. It took us 25 minutes for a one hour hike, but maybe we were running because we were so thirsty because we didn't bring any water with us.

• driving into the last light of the sunset on our way back to the Harmony Motel and seeing the silhouettes of the palm trees while the sky turned darker.

• waking up just in time for the sunrise the next morning and watching the sky turn from dark blue to fire and then feel the warmth of the first light of the sun on my skin. I was only wearing my pyjamas and it was pretty cold in the beginning but it felt so good to be awake and to do 20 minutes of yoga with Fiji right next to the pool.

So in the end it wasn't really the well known sights of the National Park or at least not only them which made this a great start for our roadtrip but feeling these moments with as much awareness as possible.