Joshua Tree National Monument, Calif.-Springtime in the high desert:
visions of soft breezes, expanses of wildflowers, the cactus in ardent full bloom, the traffic through Joshua Tree National Monument bumper to bumper . . .
Lots of folk head for the desert in the spring; it`s the best legal psychedelic experience around.
Nobody goes in the summer because it`s too hot. And in fall and winter, the vistas are mostly gray. A sudden downpour can turn the newly paved road through Joshua Tree into squish.
But those are exactly the right times to visit. Off-season, you get the feeling that this wonderful place is yours, all yours.
The poster colors of the flowering cactus and the ocotillo are gone, but the range of pastel shades has its own quiet beauty.
Here and there, an angel`s trumpet is in full bloom, a virginal white that`s almost blinding against the subdued colors elsewhere.
Year round, there are the incredible rock formations, some like giant fists just forcing their way up from the sand. There are the Joshua trees-exactly what plants would look like if they could walk and talk and gesticulate. The point about this park is that it brings together, in relatively little space, most of the great desert cliches.
Best of all are Joshua Tree`s early evenings. The time just past twilight is magical at any time of year; something about the evening air almost becomes a perfume. Drive off the highway a few yards, perch on a rock and breathe and listen. Around you are the scurryings of small animals that have spent the day hours in life-preserving shade. A distant coyote howls; night birds exchange secrets. The sky turns a black you never see above the lights of a city. Sometimes shooting stars add to the magic. Just outside the Twentynine Palms exit, about a mile north of the park, is another kind of magic. When Jane and Ron Grunt inherited the Twentynine Palms Inn from Ron`s parents, they were living on a houseboat up near Inverness.
When they moved down to the inn, they had to take the houseboat along. That`s not as odd as it sounds, because the inn sits on the Oasis of Mara.
Walk a few yards from your cabin in one direction and you`re out in the desert, with sand and lizards and cactus. Walk in another direction and you`re at a pond, with ducks and geese squabbling and, yes, a houseboat moored at the far end.
Don`t visit the Twentynine Palms Inn just to feed the ducks, however. You also can feed yourselves astoundingly well. The kitchen would be superb by city standards, though look for nothing exotic.
You could drive there and back in a day from L.A., heading north from Interstate Highway 10 to Twentynine Palms along California Highway 62, stopping at the inn and then looping south through the park and back to I-10. But then you miss a night at one of the rustic adobe cabins, each one named after a desert flower, all air-conditioned and comfortable, if a little basic (bring fly swatter).
The other advantage of fleeing to the desert in the off-season is that you usually can count on rooms being available. Other times, you may not be so lucky.
Twentynine Palms Inn (619-367-3505) is 140 miles from Los Angeles. Rates are $60 double, weekdays; $85, weekends. Dinners are about $20; Sunday brunch (including champagne) is $7.95. Credit cards are accepted. Admission to the Joshua Tree National Monument is $5, but the gates are usually untended-there`s no one to pay-except during the wildflower season.
