I guess being a child of the 80’s and growing up with American road trip movies romanticised the whole jumping in a car and going and driving long distances in the US. Always been a dream, and in the previous times i’d been to the US there really wasn’t much of a road tri component. So it was top of my list to at least “taste” a bit of the road.
Quick trip, 2 nights, Day 1 – LA to Joshua Tree, Day 2- Joshua Tree, Day 3…. that is where it got interesting…
Day 3… do we take it easy as we had Disneyland the next 3 days… or do we go hard. We decided to take it easy. With a 30 week pregnant wife and a 7 year old, taking it a bit easy was certainly going to be the best option.
Then again… you don’t want to live with regrets do you? And what’s a road trip without a random adventure?
So we did decide to drive towards Disneyland… but took a 5 hour detour to unique USA locations, first stop Salton Sea, an environmental disaster area south of Palm Springs. I’d seen it in blog posts of “unique places” with dead fish just washing up on the shore and sulpha in the air. Next stop down the road was a place I first saw in a blog post called “Salvation Mountain”, one man’s monument to God made from hay, concrete and paint. Final stop, for a very short time was another of the USA’s most interesting locations. Slab City is the “last free place in America” Think of people essentially living off the grid in the desert. Some create art, others just exist.
This last day was the random adventure i’d dreamed of. The taste of hitting the road is strong in my mouth, i’m craving another one.
And the next day we were in the Disneyland bubble, the complete opposite of the California badlands. That was hard to get our heads around, but we did quickly because… well… Disneyland!
Road trip Salton Sea, Joshua Tree, Salvation Mountain, California
