Over the weekend, I took Sarah to Joshua Tree as an early birthday present. It should only take two hours to get there. We left at 2:30 on Friday, thinking we’d beat the rush. It ended up taking us four and 1/2 hours. Note to anyone in LA looking to get away for the weekend: leave Thursday.

We were originally going to stay in a cabin, but Sonny & Julia were coming up Saturday, and it was difficult to find a place that would accommodate two couples and a baby. So I rented a room at the Pioneertown Motel. According to their website, this is where the movie stars sleep. As we soon learned, they weren’t just blowing smoke.

Pioneertown is about three miles off of Route 62, a/k/a 29 Palms Highway. By the time we arrived, at 7:00 on Friday, it was pitch black outside. We walked up to the office and knocked on the door. Through the window, we could see a little girl of about four or five sitting in the office by herself, watching a My Little Pony video. The door was locked. Sarah looked in the window, trying to project an air of grandmotherly harmlessness as I knocked again. “No one’s home,” the little girl mouthed. “How can we get into our room?” I asked. The girl shrugged and turned back to her video.

It is surprisingly panic-inducing when you arrive at a motel and the only person in the office is a disinterested four-year-old girl watching My Little Pony. Just when the whole weekend was on the verge of breaking down, the owner returned from the back of the motel, full of apologies. She looked like Shirley Maclaine in The Apartment, so we quickly forgave her. We paid our money and unloaded our stuff.

The Pioneertown Motel

We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and then returned to the room and watched satellite TV.

The next morning, we woke up early and drove back to the main town area. After bagels and coffee at a local coffeeshop, we noticed a sign for a garage sale being held in a barn. A garage sale in a barn sounds like a big garage sale to me, and there are few things I like more than a big garage sale. On the way to the sale, we passed by a dome house. We stopped at it. It looked abandoned.

In addition to the dome house, the property also contained this terrifying shark/camper hybrid:

I was slightly glad that the owners weren’t home, because anyone who would paint teeth on their camper like that can’t be right in the head.

We eventually stumbled upon the garage sale. We bought a ton of housewares for $16. Serving dishes and what not. We’re having Thanksgiving at our place this year and now we can present our food on something other than plastic plates. The best find, obviously, was this penguin pitcher:

The people running the garage sale were very nice. They owned an ice company in LA. I asked how one went about starting an ice company. “Get a formula and then buy a bunch of water,” the husband told me. I would like to read the formula. I bet it says something like: “Freeze.”

He asked how long we’d been married and we said, “we’re not married.” “Sinners! You can’t buy our plates!” he shouted. Then he told us he was only kidding and he and his wife had lived together for 8 1/2 years before getting married. Sarah asked what the secret was to marital longevity. “Don’t listen,” the husband said. “Have your husband leave every other week,” the wife said. According to this couple, the key to happiness is to ignore and avoid one another. They were just joking, though, in that way that older married couples can say “I wish my spouse were dead” and everyone has a good laugh.

When we got back to the motel, Sonny & Julia & Ben were there waiting for us. We said our hellos and then went to a diner and got some lunch. After lunch, they went back to the motel to put Ben down for a nap and Sarah and I went to Joshua Tree.

We drove 1/2 an hour into the park, to a place called Mt. Ryan. Joshua Tree was pretty amazing. It looks like another planet. We started out on a 1.5 mile hike up Mt. Ryan, but we ran out of time halfway up and had to come back down. Still, we got pretty high up:

After the hike, Sonny & Julia and Ben met us by the visitors’ center, and we drove back into the park, so they could get a look at it. They were suitably impressed, but it was getting dark, so they dropped us off at our car and headed back to the motel.

When we got back to the motel, Sonny was talking to the Shirley Maclaine-looking owner and her British husband. They had just purchased the Pioneertown Motel two months ago on eBay. No kidding.

Sonny pulled me aside after his conversation and said, “dude, Robbie Rist is here tonight.” I said, “I don’t know who that is.” Sonny knows the names of a lot of people who most people don’t know the names of. “Cousin Oliver,” he said. “From The Brady Bunch.”

Cousin Oliver

“First of all,” I said, “how do you know that Cousin Oliver’s real name is Robbie Rist? Second of all, how do you recognize him? Third of all, what is he doing here?” Apparently, Sonny had just seen a special about The Brady Bunch on which Cousin Oliver was interviewed, and he said he was now a musician in LA. His band King Size Maybe was playing at Pappy and Harriet’s that night, which was the shit-kicker bar right in front of the Pioneertown Motel. Well, we couldn’t exactly not go to Pappy and Harriet’s if Cousin Oliver’s band was playing.

Ben and Ava (the four-year old) played together while we got to know the owners of the Pioneertown Motel and the members of King Size Maybe. Gary, the singer, and Shelly, the bassist, were staying next door to us with their six-year-old daughter Hazel. Sonny and Julia weren’t sure if they should take Ben to the bar or not, seeing as how it would be loud and he’s very small. “Shoot,” said Gary, “Hazel’s been rocking and rolling with us up on stage since she was born.” Hazel looked to be relatively well-adjusted, so Sonny and Julia conceded that Ben could spend one night rocking and rolling without too much lasting harm.

It was a wise decision. Pappy and Harriet’s is a pretty special place. Words cannot do it justice. There was a poolroom in the back filled with the downest and dirtiest scalliwags I’ve ever seen outside of a Pee Wee Herman movie. The place seriously looked like it was filled with pirates. We had beers and ribs and listened to some excellent country rock. I bought a cap. It’s a trucker’s cap. I swore long ago that I would never in my life wear a trucker’s cap, but I couldn’t turn this one down:

The next morning, we woke up and cooked breakfast in the room, and then went for a one mile hike around Joshua Tree. A lovely time was had by all, and it only took us two hours to get back to LA.

A beautiful look at Joshua Tree. See those tiny people in the left hand corner there? That’s me and Julia and Ben.

Look at that tiny speck at the top of this rock. That’s a dude, dude. Nuts. Sonny couldn’t even look at the rock climbers until I told him that they wore harnesses. He was afraid they were going to come tumbling down at any given second and he would have to watch helplessly as they smashed upon the ground.

Sarah, giving me the Bronx cheer.

Me, doing something vaguely gay.

Ben doing his walrus impression.

“Let’s see … I believe I will have the steak frites and your finest glass of port.”

The group at the end of the weekend: tired, yet content after a fabulous weekend adventure.