For the last little leg of our road trip, we planned a very Western themed day!
We left Bakersfield and headed for Calico, which is a famous tourist-trap-style ghost town in the middle of the desert. This was actually something we were really excited to “tick off” on this trip. It was a silver mining town in the 1880s, but it’s been modernized to have restaurants and stuff.
We walked around and poked our heads in most of the buildings.
Some parts are left more rough than others.
It was a little too touristy for us, but I think we thought it was fun. We then headed to Joshua Tree, but planned to stop at another ghost town on the way: Pioneertown. This “ghost town” was actually built as a film set, I think. So it also feels fake like Calico, but it’s actually fake! It’s basically just one street, but it has the town hall, the saloon, etc.
There wasn’t too much to see, so we headed on. The bonus with Pioneertown is it’s free (and not totally in the middle of nowhere). If I had to pick one, I would say go to Pioneertown.
We also made another stop between Calico and Joshua Tree. It’s called the Integratron. We found it on on Google Maps while we were driving and we really needed a bathroom stop, so we decided to check it out. It’s actually a mediatation retreat center, which is famous for being a good place to meet aliens. The courtyard area was really peaceful actually, and I would consider going for one of the sessions. Everyone there seemed to be in a kind of daze after coming out of the building.
After some of the wildest stops we made the whole trip, we finally made it to Joshua Tree. We decided to set up camp and then explore the park.
I like Joshua Tree, because there’s not too many specific places to see, you just kind of experience the trees and the rocks and the desert.
Everywhere you look is just super interesting!
Then we headed back to camp for sunset. We walked up to the top of this cliff near our campsite. It overlooked everything, and turned out to be a great place to watch the sunset.
We also realized the moon was rising behind us. You can see the moon over our tent, which is the little white speck among the rocks.
We then stayed up pretty cooking dinner and talking.
In the morning, we packed up and went to the southern part of the park, which has these different type of cacti that you can only see there. It feels very different in that part of the park!
Then we finally left Joshua Tree and headed back to San Diego! It felt so weird heading back after a month. We went directly to Ocean Beach to put our feet in the ocean. It felt like an appropriate way to end the road trip. We ate burgers at Hodad’s and then went back to my apartment and unloaded the car. We spent the next couple of days showing Jess and Dotty around San Diego, but the road trip was over!
My next post will wrap up this series, but I’ll just say here that this was a really amazing trip, and I’m so grateful I got to do this right before I started grad school. It was also a nice way to explore the western US, since I hadn’t even been to California or anywhere west of the Mississippi until the year before! I can’t wait to go on a road trip again!
