Waking up the last morning in Los Angeles was tough. LA had been good to us. The weather was beautiful, people were great and the food was outstanding. We also didn’t want to give up the new addition to our fleet, our rental Camaro. We had a deadline though to return it so we packed up and pulled out of the campground, Julie driving Bubbles while I drove the Camaro back to Hertz. After dropping off our new friend we stopped at a grocery store to stock up before hitting the highway towards Palm Springs.
It was a bit of a difficult drive as fierce Santa Ana winds were strong which pushed Bubbles side to side on the highway. I have nothing but respect for 18 wheel truckers because of this. If strong winds make Bubbles hard to control I can’t imagine what the winds do to a vehicle that’s 70+ feet long (Bubbles is 20’). We were also a bit lucky as well as this was early December and wildfires had started to pop up at various locations in Southern California. At the time though most were north of Los Angeles or in remote parts of northern San Diego County. None were in our path or where we were headed.
As getting to Palm Springs is fairly close to LA we pulled into town in early afternoon. Our campground for the next few days was in the town of Palm Desert, just outside of Palm Springs but as Palm Springs is the famous town we wanted to see what it was all about. Palm Springs turned out to be beautiful, an oasis in the desert. It was also pretty neat as most of the town had a retro theme to it. Most of the older buildings had been built in the 1950’s in an Art Deco style and had not been torn down. These buildings had been taken care of over the years and as a result you have this cool, funky town in the desert now. We walked up and down the main drag of the town popping into shops every now and then before making our way back to Bubbles and to our campground for the evening.
The next day we woke up, had breakfast and started out. Today was going to be a bit of a different day. Today we would be taking a sound bath in a building called the Integratron. We had seen this month’s prior while watching a show on the travel channel and the host went to it. The story of the Integratron goes as the following; in the early 1950’s a fellow named George van Tassel was meditating in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. He claimed that aliens from the planet Venus contacted him telepathically. They told him that the human race would destroy itself unless they stopped having wars. The way to do this was to increase human’s life by 50 years. This was due to the fact that a human they told him was the happiest in the last 10 years of their life. If their life was increased by 50 years a good percentage of the population would be in their “happy zone”, wars would stop and human existence would survive. The way to do this was to build a time machine that would increase life by 50 years. What George ended up building was a perfectly symmetrical, all wooden structure that had an amazing acoustic sound chamber. While I’m not quite sure that I believe that George was contacted by beings from Venus, he did create an amazing sound space.
The Integratron is literally in the middle of nowhere. It is out in the desert and takes an hour to get to from Palm Springs. You pass a few little towns but generally all we saw were cactus and a boulder every now and then. Then you come upon this white wooden dome. We had signed up for a group “bath” online and once we got there we checked in. The structure is 2 stories with the lower area having artifacts of the buildings history and why it’s located where it is. Everyone takes his or her shoes off and heads up a ladder into the sound chamber. From there you pick a mat and blanket and lie down. The instructor then started to play these quartz bowls with a big rubber mallet. The way the sound chamber was designed the note coming out of these quartz bowls reverberates through the room and you can feel it in your body. It’s really neat and something that we had never experienced before. It was almost like doing yoga without having to move. The sound bath lasted for an hour and a half. Afterwards we walked around the property for a bit taking a video and some pictures before heading back to Bubbles and the campground for the night.
The next day we woke up, ate a quick breakfast and we were off again. Today was a National Park day. We had not been to one in quite a while and lucky for us Joshua Tree National Park was just down the road. While Joshua Tree does not have grand vistas of other more famous parks, it has some pretty neat and crazy plant life and rocks which is what we wanted to see. The park has a few entrances so we decided to drive around to one of the northern entrances and then make our way back south by the end of the day. Entering from the north you are immediately entering a Joshua Tree forest of sorts. Joshua Trees are very unique looking. They start off pretty normal with a singular trunk with bark. Once it reaches a height of 3’ or so its branches are spindly going in every direction with a sort of small palm frawn on the end. If Dr. Seuss created a plant this would be it! We drove through the trees stopping every now and then to get out to go on small hikes. One of the larger hikes we did was at Hidden Valley where the hike takes you around huge boulders and in a small valley surrounded by rock on every side. It was really neat. This area of the park was also a very popular spot for rock climbing. We saw many people scaling rocks on this hike hearing them call to each other from the tops.
Once we were hiked out we continued our drive through the park and back to Palm Desert. Randomly for us today we would be meeting up with another one of our friends. Our buddy Kevin was coming to Palm Springs for a work conference and his first night was our last night. We had seen Kevin and his wife Heidi a few months prior, as we just happened to be in Salt Lake City when Heidi had a work conference there. Now it was Kevin’s turn and we just happened to be in the same town again. Once Kevin arrived and was settled we took an Uber to his hotel, picked him up and headed to Palm Springs for the night. It was great being able to catch up with Kevin again over dinner then drinks at a local Tiki Bar (they really need more Tiki bars on the east coast, these places are great!). As Kevin had a long travel day we didn’t stay out too late and before we knew it we were back at our campground for the night.
The next day we woke up, packed and we were off. This was going to be our last night in Bubbles for quite a while as we were headed back to the east coast for the holidays. We had to alter our route a bit heading from Palm Springs back to San Diego as the wildfires had grown larger but that was ok as we were taking the scenic route. Almost immediately after leaving the town the road had switchback after switchback going from almost sea level to 4000 feet. There were a few stopping points in which you could see amazing views of the valley below. Once we reached the top it was as if we were in a totally different state. Gone were the cactus’s and in its place big oak trees and grasses. It was really pretty neat. We took our time driving the back roads eventually connecting with I-8 and heading into San Diego. We spent our last night in Bubbles at the San Diego Metro KOA preparing her for her time in storage and packing our bags for our trip back east the next day.
Next up….Warm Family Reunion in Florida and a Snowy, Cold, few weeks in Rochester.
