If you've been paying any attention lately, you already know that glamping is the hottest new weekend getaway trend.
All across your social media, your friends and bloggers, are posting about their glamorous weekends spent in dolled-up canvas tents, fantasy forest forts, little houses built onto the tops of trees. Inside these contemporary shelters, that are tall enough to stand up straight and spread out in, sleeping bags are swapped out for feather beds. They are fashionably furnished with lush recliner couches, dining tables and chairs and pretty, patterned rugs layered on the floor. They often come equipped with running water and overhead lights and power outlets.
And I'll be honest with you.
I'm loving everything about this glamping concept.
And not just because it's trending on Instagram.
What I love about glamping is that it's like camping but it's not actually camping. You know?
Because to me camping just seems like a lot of hard work.
Shopping for supplies. Packing the car. Setting up camp. Pitching the tent. Chopping the wood. Lighting the fire. Cooking the meal.
And didn't I request this time to be off of work?
Rather, in my opinion, vacation time is well-spent on pool floaties shaped like pineapples or pizza slices. Frosé cocktails in short, breezy sundresses, likely to be worn without a bra, and room service breakfasts in bed. There might be a spa on-site, a private pool with generously padded chaise lounge recliners where I could lay back all day, sunbathe in a tiny bikini, meanwhile sipping on chilled flutes of champagne, garnished with a strawberry, served by a waiter in a bow tie. At night I might slip into a slinky, black, leather dress for a dinner and drinks hop down a happening neighborhood block of dim and neon cocktail bars that serve fruity, pink martinis with sugar rims and little tartines.
I like a weekend getaway, wherever that may be, to make me feel special and spoiled, relaxed, refreshed and revived.
As he will tell you, Tim prefers a camping trip to my hotel spa weekend. He'd opt for a backpack filled with dehydrated oats and trail maps and a sleeping bag over luggage packed up tightly with swim trunks, folded khakis and freshly-pressed button-ups any day. While I prefer a down bed and a hot shower, Tim would gladly accept an air mattress and a lake rinse instead.
But I'd like to let it be known, you guys, that I also enjoy spending time in the great outdoors.
Sometimes.
Like Tim, I, too, can like feeling remote, out in nature, where there are no other people around for miles and miles. Beaches just for us. Uninterrupted views. The quiet that we crave. I, too, can get into the idea of spending the day outside, river swimming and forest hiking.
It's just that after a full day of rolling around in the dirt is it so crazy that I'd like to be able to return to a nice room that has a steam shower and a complimentary robe and slipper set?
For as many hours as I work a week, I think not.
And that's what I love so much about this glamping trend. It's like staying at a hotel but one where your room opens up to a beautiful natural landscape instead of a lobby crowded with clueless tourists.
The way I see it, a glamping trip offers Tim and I the most healthy compromise between the ritzy resort room experience that I crave and the sleeping-under-the-stars adventure that Tim so covets. On a glamping trip, Tim gets to feel like we're on some wild expedition, far away from civilization in the great outdoors, but then, when I need a break from all things natural at the end of a long day of roughing it, I still get to enjoy the comforts of modern conveniences like electricity for charging my phone and running water for washing my hair.
So when a few months ago I came across this hipster-looking glamping tipi in Joshua Tree that cost nearly next to nothing to book on Airbnb, I immediately reserved it for us for a night. (Actually, I came across lots of tipi options for booking in Joshua Tree on Airbnb. I just ended up choosing the one that was available for a night that fit our hectic schedules.)
The pictures of the camp on the Airbnb website showed a large, canvas tipi situated on a raised, wooden platform in the middle of a garden of juniper and Joshua trees. Inside the tent was a daybed for two dressed in colorful Mexican blankets and lots of textured throw pillows, a bedside table crowded with vials of incense sticks and in the corner some woven baskets for storage. Two chairs outside the tent were arranged side-by-side for sitting in the sun, reclining at sunset, coffee drinking at dawn. On another raised platform opposite the tent, nestled in the corner and shaded by more desert shrubs, was a deep and old but working porcelain bathtub.
I knew that Tim would be excited to sleep out in the desert, near to nature, kind of camping.
I was excited about the tub.
We went in April when the weather in the Yucca Valley is just brimming on hot. When, as dusk nears, the heat of the day, broken up by orange-colored breezes perfumed with cactus flowers and chlorinated pool water, makes for perfectly temperate evenings.
On the drive out to Joshua Tree, I insisted that we make a quick stop at Cabazon so that Tim could see the Cabazon Dinosaurs, a silly roadside attraction featuring two enormous, steel-and-concrete dinosaurs named Dinny the Dinosaur and Mr. Rex who were made famous by their 1985 cameo appearance in Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure, which, by the way, you all should know is one of my very favorite movies of all time.
"Be sure and tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!"
Pulling off at the exit at Cabazon I remembered to Tim that my family used to stop here all the time on our way out to Palm Springs for slices of pie at the once Wheel Inn Restaurant. Now we stopped, Tim and I, to take a few pictures of the dinos, to remember my favorite quotes from the movie and to stock up on Arizona Peach Iced Teas at the Shell gas station that replaced the restaurant in 2013.
As much as I love the Cabazon Dinosaurs we didn't stay long. I was anxious to get out to the desert, to Joshua tree, to our tipi camp.
The desert has always held such a special place in my heart.
It's colors, shapes, sounds.
In the days and weeks leading up to our trip I had fantasized about how it would be. In my daydreams, Tim and I rolled into the hot desert, windows down, dusty wind whipping through the car, tangling my hair and chapping Tim's lips. After pulling off the interstate and driving for a long time on an unnamed, bumpy road, dirt, not paved, we might come to some hard-to-find ranch. Waiting for us in a rocking chair on the porch of the ranch house, toothpick in his mouth, spurs on his boots, our cowboy host would kindly introduce himself with a desert drawl and then direct us to some distant patch of the property, past the old barn, past the herd of wild horses, where we would find and spend the night in our tipi, among the stars and far away from all the people of the town and the interstate.
That's not exactly how it was, though.
Where I had imagined to find our tipi tent pitched on a sprawling desert ranch, actually, when we arrived at our camp, we found that the tipi was set-up in the front yard of our Airbnb host's house, which was located on the corner of a pretty residential neighborhood in the town of Joshua Tree.
A narrow dirt path lined with stones led Tim and I from the driveway into a clearing in a thick cluster of desert hedges and tall Joshua trees, and there we found our tipi and tub. This area of the front yard designated for our camp was enclosed by a tall fence for added privacy and a vintage glass door provided us with our own entrance.
To be fair, the property, and our camp area, were charming and likable, it's true.
Still, initially, I was bothered by a neighbors house that was across the street, just on the other side of the fence and visible through the glass door.
We were not so much as out in the wilderness as I had anticipated we would be.
But!
Our host, not an old cowboy, was a charming eccentric named Sophia with wild, curly black hair and perfectly fierce eyebrows. When we pulled in she was in the yard watering her plants, wearing fiery red lipstick with a nude-colored, one-piece bathing suit, her fuzzy, black bush spilling unapologetically out of the high-cut front. At our arrival she threw down the hose and ran barefoot through the dust to meet and welcome us with a strong hug.
I liked her immediately.
Then, when she took us inside her house and gave us a homemade aphrodisiac bath bomb, to be used in the camp's big porcelain tub, I liked her even more.
She had whipped the soap together with lavender oils and herbs she found on her property, she explained.
She was the kind of woman who knew all about rock energies and astrologies and astronomies. Herbal remedies and healing powers. She was weird and mysterious and maybe, besides the fact that she was so damn sweet, that's why I liked her so much.
Sophia told us to explore the property and to make ourselves comfortable in her yard which was deceptively sprawling. From the porch of her home, she gestured to the horizon to where a barbed wire fence marked the edge of her land. Her yard, a collage of Joshua Trees and big, gestural cactus and succulents extended far, out into some slight nearby hills, where beyond, the desert landscape continued to unfold, seemingly infinitely.
Out back, she told us, we could follow a dirt path that circled around the yard. We would find a professional grade telescope for stargazing, the constellations here still easy to locate in the Yucca Valley that's not yet contaminated by light pollution. At another spot in the yard we'd come across a big, turquoise bench for resting and reclining.
Sophia would be leaving for L.A. for the night, she told us, and we would have the whole place to ourselves.
My slight disappointment in the residential-ness of the place that threatened our sense of privacy dissipated.
A night here, at the glamping camp, even with neighbors across the street, would be just as quiet, special, romantic as I hoped it could be.
We certainly did make ourselves comfortable.
The tipi, our camp, was unique, chic and smartly decorated.
Inside the tent was airy, clean, and thoughtfully arranged, just like the pictures had promised. A fuzzy, faux hide rug, dream journals, books about native plants and purple crystals arranged neatly on an antique wood table next to the bed gave our lodgings a new age-y, Urban Outfitters-y sort of feel.
And I sure do love Urban Outfitters.
Polietly, Sophia had laid out some clean towels and extra blankets for us on the bed.
All around the camp, crisscrossed above the tipi, wrapped around the tub, and tangled in the hedges and cactus trees, were strings of sparkling white lights. In the early evening, and later, deep into the dark night, the glittery glow of light from the bulbs around the camp was romantic, dreamy.
Late in the afternoon, when the low-slung sun colored the desert gold like honey, I tossed Sophia's soap bomb into the the tub to soften and perfume the steamy, hot water of the bath I drew and I steeped in it for over an hour. Eventually, after Tim woke up from a doze in a hammock that he found somewhere out in the yard, he joined me in the bath to soak until the sun started to sink lower and the water started to get colder and we both started to think about dinner.
We decided to feast on a proper cowboy steak dinner at the famed Pappy and Harriett's in Pioneertown, just a short drive for us from our tipi in Joshua Tree. To get there, we passed over a bleached, sandy road that twisted, turned and climbed up rocky hills, through broken boulders and around wide bends.
Inspired by a real wild west town of the 1880s, Pioneertown was built in the 1940s as a movie set by a group of Hollywood investors, including actors Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The idea was to create an Old West movie and TV set that would double as an actual town. It's main feature is a four-block-long “Mane Street” with spaghetti western-style edifices, complete with horse stables, a saloon and jail, a general mercantile and bank, built at two-thirds scale, set back on a wide, dusty road. However, unlike other film sets where you knock on “walls” to find they’re actually just a prop, inside the 1800s-style false-front facades of Pioneertown, there was at one time real ice cream parlors, bowling alleys, and motel rooms.
Today, the bowling alley and ice cream parlors are no longer. The town of Pioneertown, with a population of less than 500 people, is now an unincorporated artist community where the jewelers and leather workers and potters sell their one-of-a-kind works in the old timey buildings.
Before dinner, we poked around in the few little shops that were still open in the evening hour. In the general store I bought a pair of vintage pink sunglasses from the 90s for $5 from a man who unironically used phrases like "howdy, ma'am" and "thank you kindly" and "y'all take care now." Bored of watching me shop, Tim wandered into an old barn that had been converted into the actual coolest book store I've ever seen in my whole life. Not that the collection of texts was all that impressive. Actually, the bookstore was just a few shelves of old editions and paperbacks with missing pages.
But in the corner of the big, empty barn, under a canopy of Christmas lights, a violinist and a guitar playing singer who crooned county ballads into a microphone for no audience except for us, made for truly a special experience.
From Pappy and Harriet’s, a saloon, nightclub and restaurant that is the main attraction for many who visit Pioneertown, the smell of barbecue smoke and fire roasted meats pulled Tim and I out of the bookstore and into the cowboy bar that was absolutely hoppin' on a Sunday night.
At the hostess stand, a long line hungry Harley-Davidson bikers, tourists from out of town, Pioneertown locals were inquiring about wait times for tables.
We added our names to the list, cooled down with a cold a beer on the back patio and rocked out to Led Zeppelin and Motörhead covers played by the saloon's house band, The Sunday Band, until our names were called.
Tim and I were seated in an empty-ish part of the restaurant away from the music and all the fun. A perfectly nice and efficient server took our order. I ordered the tri tip plate with a heaping side of garlic mashed potatoes and corn cob. Tim opted for a steak sammy. I ate nearly everything on my plate and Tim did, too. The food was good, though not exceptional.
Full of beer and brisket, we piled back in the car to drive back to our tipi in the pitch black, except for the blond sand and low-lying shrubs illuminated by our headlights.
In the tipi we slept soundly and deeply. Out in the desert it was quiet, quiet, only the occasional sound of the paws of some desert mammal on the ground. We were warm under the blankets and next to each other.
We only spent one night in our Joshua Tree tipi.
I woke up early to make the vacation longer.
I love mornings in the desert. For a long time, in the early morning when Tim was still asleep, I sat out on that turquoise bench by myself, enjoying the light and life of the dawn. I watched for birds, snakes, lizards, deer. I listened for the sound of horse hooves and last, lingering coyote howls.
I brewed coffee for Tim and I on the outdoor stove in our camp. The water boiled in a kettle on a hot plate, and when it was boiling, I poured it over fresh grounds where they steeped in a french press. We drank it out of tin mugs in the chairs shaded by the towering Joshua trees that surrounded our camp.
I rolled out my yoga mat. Smoked a joint. Practiced some poses. Smoked another joint.
Then Tim and I spent a whole day in the desert.
Any trip to Joshua Tree will obviously include a visit to the National Park. Home to countless cacti, towering rock formations, twisted, spiky Dr. Seuss-esque trees numerous nature trails and world-renowned climbing, it truly is nature’s majesty at its grandest.
As hiking is Tim's thing, he picked a trail, googled the directions for the nearby trailhead and I drove us into the desert.
The morning was warm and almost no winds promised that the day would be hot, so we set off onto the trail early so as to beat some of the noonday heat.
West Side Loop Trail was moderately easy for us to hike. The trail that takes you through a series of narrow washes explores the ridge and washes west of Black Rock Campground and provides sweeping views of the San Bernadino and San Jacinto mountains to the southwest.
Out on the four mile trail, we saw almost no one else, save for one other pair of hikers who quietly passed us. In a logbook that I found about 2 miles into the trail, a hiker from earlier in the morning signed that they had seen a desert tortoise on the path. We, sadly, didn't see one.
After the hike, (a girl can only hike so much) we had a few hours to kill before heading back to Santa Barbara and so we headed back to town.
I think Tim liked the town of Joshua Tree.
And I liked Joshua Tree a lot, too.
If you've been there, you know it's kind of a weird place.
All at once, the town is old and new. Isolated, rugged and brutally hot during the summer, you might expect the place to
be populated by retired ranch hands, cheap rent seekers, old desert dwellers, leather-skinned locals. It's not the place you'd expect to find young hipsters in trendy boutiques selling expensive luxury brand clothing and jewelry, third wave coffee shops, trending cafes, and yet, it is.
In town, we browsed through a row of antique shops. Tim thumbed through old records, books. He admired vintage coffee mugs and authentic Mexican blankets. I eyed some collectible kitchenware, a vintage portrait painting, a deer skull. We accidentally stumbled upon the World Famous Crochet Museum.
We went to walk around Desert Christ Park, where, overlooking the high desert town of Yucca Valley, visitors will find more than 40 white statues portraying scenes of Christ's life and teachings.
In the five decades since it was first built in the Yucca Valley, Desert Christ Park has endured a major earthquake, Satan-referencing graffiti and pipe-wielding teenage vandals. Consequently, many of the statues are now missing faces and limbs exposing steely skeletons, which even the most pious of visitors must admit gives the park a seriously creepy vibe.
However, open during daylight hours each and every day of the year and free of charge, I highly recommend visiting this park that can only best be described as straight up weird.
At the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum, Tim and I explored the 7.5 acres of open land that displays Purifoy’s assemblage sculptures, all created on-site between 1989 and 2004.
Many of the works fuse sculpture and architecture and all together, the pieces in Purifoy's Outdoor Museum feel like a village. There is a squatter's shack, a pair of small theater spaces, a gallery, a sculptural representation of a cemetery. There are no signs up at each artwork giving you a name or a description. There is no explanation of who the artist is or why he came here. A simple Google search will obviously provide you with the answers, but good luck with cell service 16 miles into the middle of nowhere.
The Museum is free, there is no ticket booth or fences, and you can stay and explore as long as you like, often times with the whole place to yourself.
Did I mention how weird Joshua Tree is?
Before we had to leave, I lunched on a big pizza slice at Pie For The People and Tim ordered a cold brew from Joshua Tree Coffee Company .
Had we more time I would have liked to have eaten at La Copine, a New-American restaurant between Joshua Tree and Pioneertown, offering fresh, inspired dishes like soccarat and duck fat fingerling potatoes. And as much as I enjoyed glamping, I know I also could have stood to stick around for another night to stay at the Mojave Sands Motel, a five room desert motel originally built in 1952.
The good news is, is like L.A. or San Diego or Palm Springs, Joshua Tree is an easy three hour drive for us and heading out to the desert for a quick, restorative weekend is affordable and totally doable.
When the time, and the weather, are right, we'll be back for more and more glamping.
Because from now on my motto is, "Why the fuck would you camp when you could just glamp?"
