Off We Go to Joshua Tree

Where I like to eat, stay, and scramble in J-Tree, aka Joshy Tree, aka Joshy, aka "that place with the spiky trees," aka Boulder City, aka "haven't you been there a lot recently?"

This is an utterly non-comprehensive recommendations list for Joshua Tree and its neighboring towns in the High Dez; just where I go and what I do when I’m there. Not everything to do and everywhere to go in Joshua Tree. This disclaimer is true of all my recommendations lists. It might not all be for you; but I hope you discover something here that turns out as fun and cool for you as it was for me.

To see these Joshua Tree recs on a map, click here.

Context

Josh and I go way back. Not that far back, but way back.

I first visited Joshua Tree, and Palm Desert in general, either the summer after high school graduation or the summer after my first year of college. I can’t remember, and I won’t go to Facebook to look up the photos because yeesh. Either way, in that quintessentially transitional season of life, a bunch of my high school friends and I drove out to Palm Springs to stay in someone’s parents’ timeshare condo. Most of that trip is reduced in my memory to being constantly hot (temperature), astounded at the number of people that could fit in a pool, equally astounded at how hot pool water could be, swearing off public pools forever, eating more than once at the Yard House happy hour, and broadly feeling happy to be with my friends. But, the one thing we did that wasn’t any of those things was pile into my friend Nick’s van to go up to Joshua Tree.

I’ve always liked boulders. Like, the idea of boulders, just big old rocks; which is a wild thing to say, I know. I’ve always liked the desert, too. I mostly chalk that up to Indiana Jones, as I’ve chalked up many origins of my essential likes and interests. I remember being surprised that were actually two halves of the desert and we had to drive from our half to the other to get to the park, and that the half we were going to was way more desert-y. I remember seeing the towering boulder piles for the first time and imagining the geographic timelapse of world evolution that left this peculiar place in its quite literal wake. We drove past a number of these natural monuments before someone proposed the novel idea that we actually stop at one. And we did, at the biggest of them, a formation called, dead-on-the-nose, “Hemingway.”

There was maybe one other car in the parking lot. There were no discernible trails or markers. There was this giant, awfully-climbable-looking grouping of rocks. We, stereotypical boys who’d never consider ourselves as such, climbed. We went up and down and all around, only pausing to find the next checkpoint, the next interesting place to reach on our unsteady ascent. We eventually found ourselves at the top, after a long and chaotic couple of hours.

I remember that afternoon of rock scrambling, clambering, and scrabbling felt as boyish and coming-of-age and summer and Stand By Me as anything I’d ever done. The scrambling itself was (still is) this primal joy, no tools or safety pads, no supervision, no right way to do it besides the way that doesn’t get you hurt. Can I use what’s here to get where I think I want to go? If not, okay…I’ll just want to go somewhere else.

Those of us at the top sat in the cool shadow of the peak boulder and waved at those down below, heading back to the car. We thought, nervously, that it might take us as long to get down as it did to get up; but we were there in about 20 minutes, and went directly back to the timeshare.

In the years since, Joshua Tree and I have been on again, off again acquaintances. I’ve spent nice, debauched weekends there with friends. I spent many more weekends there alone from fall 2020 to fall 2021, a period of time that practically self-describes the reason I was there so often. I scramble, I eat hearty and occasionally junky food (there is a Sonic), I enjoy more and more the deserty-ness of the High Desert. I especially appreciate the small town of feel of Joshua Tree that remains, despite everything LA tourism has brought uninvited into the dust.

All right, without further retrospection: the many things I enjoy in and about and near Joshua Tree that I hope you will enjoy, or have enjoyed, too.

Stay

How to pick a stay in Joshua Tree that isn’t a “content house”

There’s one hotel near Joshua Tree that’s worth staying at, but really the move here is to rent a home or room. Rentals (Airbnbs, etc.) in Joshua Tree are pretty expensive, a few of them rightfully so, but many others are clear influencer-traps and cheap cash-grabs by the bored, wealthy, and opportunistic of LA. These are the kinds of quick-build homes decorated in the style of the Instagram search tab, that feel more like a rinky-dink backlot set propped up by two-by-fours than a place where someone actually lives, or could live (first tip: if you see a “cowboy tub” listed in the rental’s features, run). There are sadly a lot of those places, which have over a long period of time contributed to pricing much of the existing population out of the area; in Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley particularly.

That said, there are plenty of places worth staying at most price levels. There are still relatively cheap, genuine artist havens rented out only half the year. There are well-kept guest rooms on friendly ranches and large homesteads, some of them even working. There are stunning hillside retreats, architected to oblivion, with infinity pools and minimal kitchens and conversation pits and fire pits — worthy of a splurge.

A few tips before the actual recommendations:

• (Mostly) Trust the Superhosts. If you’re using Airbnb, their Superhost qualification process is just rigorous enough that you can trust that stay will at least be clean, if not completely legit.

• Watch out for cowboy tubs, moss walls, & arch swings. Listen, if all that is your jam, then that’s fine. But usually those “features” come at the expense of genuine comfort. People who set up rentals for the ‘gram tend to forget or discount simpler things (good mattresses, fluffy towels, useful kitchenware, sittable living room furniture) that make a stay actually pleasurable.

• Does that couch look nappable? You’re in the desert. It’s hot and dry and at some point you will go outside. Then, you will nap. If the couch in the pics doesn’t look like a good place to crash immediately after lunch, don’t book it. There is no better litmus test for the general comfort of a stay than this question.

A few rentals I recommend:

• Desert Mesa House. This is more or less the perfect rental for any group with three or more people in their party. Fantastic view from the backyard, great dining table, chairs, fire pit. It’s got a little swing hanging from the trellis that’s pretty fun. The AC works. The couch is deeply nappable. It’s just enough of an adventure to find, turning off the main road onto dippy bumpy dusty backroads, but not so far that you need a four-wheel-drive or risk getting lost  (though I did have a blast watching, from a comfortable chair by the fire in the backyard, my buddy Rusty navigate his way up in the pitch dark, his Highlander’s headlights waving frantically through the night with every turn and bump as we tried to guide him over the phone). You’re getting the whole experience here, and a more-than-comfortable one at that.

• The Desert Tortoise. This one’s smaller, but quite nice with plenty of space. Everything works, notably all the kitchen equipment and AC. There’s a hot tub!

• The Ridge. Look at that view! It’s so viewy! The rest looks pretty cool. I haven’t stayed here. But I would. For the view.

The Pioneertown Motel

What if I told you…that tucked up above and behind the rocky hills overlooking Yucca Valley, there’s a real little Western town that used to be a fake little Western town? That’s Pioneertown.

If you’ve ever been to Pioneertown, you know the story, because it’s the first question you ask when you’re there (what is this place?) and the first one answered by any dad in earshot, or the first historical sign you see. How it used to be a Western movie set where over 100 movies were filmed during the first Hollywood Western boom, how the (working) post office is one of the longest-in-service in California, how the Western film craze dwindled but a few ranchers decided that this little nook amongst the hills was actually a mighty fine place to live. How Pappy & Harriet’s began as a dusty, out-of-the-way biker stop and grew to a bar, restaurant, and music venue with multiple stages that’s hosted the likes of Paul McCartney, Lorde, and Ke$ha (it’s still a dusty sort of place, but that’s why you’re there).

For a long time Pappy & Harriet’s and the kitschy yeehaw Western stuff (complete with “high noon” gun duel reenactment…every hour) were the only reasons to visit this nook in the hills. But recently a couple of desert-loving developers purchased and refurbished both the Pioneertown Motel and Red Dog Saloon (a formerly vacant saloon set that was a mostly freestanding building) into a genuinely fine stay and a genuinely good Tex-Mex restaurant, respectively.

The motel itself feels very motel-y, at least from the outside. You drive in, down the street that doesn’t look like a street, past the vast Pappy & Harriet’s parking lot until you see a ramshackle wooden sign with a white arrow directing you to the motel lot. There’s a cute check-in stand-slash-snack bar where you pick up your keys, then make your way down the covered walkway to your door, nodding to other guests sitting on the benches and chairs set outside each room, perfect seats for stargazing once the sun goes down. The rooms themselves are nice, feeling decidedly un-motel-y in the best possible way. The water pressure is therapeutically aggressive.

I probably wouldn’t stay more than a weekend, but if you’re looking for a unique and comfortable place to kick back (especially if you time your visit to catch a particular show at Pappy & Harriet’s), the Pioneertown Motel is more than worth a shot.

Eat

Pappy & Harriet’s

I gave you the lede on Pappy & Harriet’s already. But I didn’t really talk about the food; technically it’s a barbecue restaurant, but think more “cowboy steakhouse.” That’s not a real thing, but whatever you think you’d get at a cowboy steakhouse, get that here. Simple, regular cuts of steaks, for example: a ribeye would be dead-on. Some kind of potato. Chips and salsa to start. Beers. Stick to those and you’ll have a blast. Acceptable deviations include burgers and sandwiches, in that order.

Pappy & Harriet’s is mostly about the vibe, though, as well as the extraordinary landscape of seating. It feels busy and welcoming, all the time. It also feels kitschy, but not in that saccharine, curated way of tourist traps; in the natural way of a place that has accumulated kitsch like moss over time. It feels like a waypost in the desert. Because it is.

Red Dog Saloon

Red Dog Saloon is kinda where you go when you can’t get into Pappy & Harriet’s, or don’t want to wait, or it’s too early. That’s not the whole story — but it’s true. To clarify, Red Dog is not bad. They serve Tex-Mex, specifically breakfast tacos and chips and queso. They’ve got boozy drinks and lots of outdoor seating. It’s all pretty good! But if you’ve only got one meal in Pioneertown…I mean, yeah. You might check the other place first.

The Dez

It took me way (I mean way) too long to realize that “The Dez” is an abbreviation.

Appropriately, the Dez is an abbreviated little takeout joint on Joshua Tree’s main strip leading to the park road intersection. It shares frontage with everyone and their mother’s and their seventeen closest friends’ local favorite Crossroads Cafe a few doors down, with the new wine, beer, and liquor store Joshua Tree Bottle Shop (great) situated in between. The Dez offers an un-abbreviated menu of breakfast, lunch, snacks, and desserts, all packaged neatly to take home, to the park, or to your rear bumper (weather permitting). Their coffee is solid. There are hearty, pre-prepped takeaway deli salads (with fillers like farro and macaroni) and savory quiches that are perpetually sold out (which means you should get one if they’re sold in); also cakes and cookies.

Long story short, this is one of those places where you should just get whatever looks good to you at the moment you walk in. But order quickly — there’s only space for one group at a time inside, which means everyone behind you is counting the seconds in the desert heat.

Roadrunner Grab & Go

Joshua Tree sports not one, but two excellent grab & go options. My pick is The Dez, but by all appearances, recommendations, and research, Roadrunner Grab & Go is a more-than-worthy choice. Like The Dez, Roadrunner offers a multitude of breakfast and lunch items to go, from sandwiches to salads to pastries and other snacks. Their sandwiches in particular look great; creative, well-dressed, and built to last until your midday, mid-park lunch break.

Conveniently, Roadrunner is located at the Joshua Tree Visitor’s Center on Park Blvd, just a few steps from the intersection of Park and the 29. However, that also means they are busy on busy weekends.

Country Kitchen

Everyone likes Crossroads. I understand why they do. It’s not bad! But when in Joshua Tree for breakfast, my pick is Country Kitchen.

You do not come to the desert to eat light and healthy. That’s nothing. It’s too hot (or too cold) for you to be ordering frivolous, green-laden, Goop-approved sweet potato bowls. You need energy. The energy to go out there and show the desert who’s boss.

For this you go to Country Kitchen.

At Country Kitchen, get anything cooked in butter (you don’t have to ask for that, just anything that sounds like it would be cooked in butter). That could be a big egg scramble with hash browns. That could be their hefty breakfast burrito with chorizo. That could be their simple breakfast sandwich with crispy, greasy bacon, fried eggs, cheese, and a generous spread of mayo on toasted sourdough. That could be smothered biscuits & gravy, or pancakes, or a classic 2-2-2 plate. You get whatever you get with a mug of perfect, 87-mph down-the-middle diner coffee. You absolutely cannot fuck this up — unless you come expecting anything Gwyneth would green-light.

Crossroads

I don’t mean to badmouth Crossroads. The place is legit — it has the most flexible menu of the few breakfast and lunch restaurants in the High Desert, it’s casual with plenty of seating, and the food is solid. I just don’t believe it’s quite worth the wait on weekends when every desert weekender and all six of their vaguely artsy/mostly just stoned friends are kicking it on the sidewalk. I’m in Joshua Tree! I’ve got stuff to do! Stuff that doesn’t include waiting an hour for standard brunch fare!

But if you do have an hour to kill on the weekends, or you get up early, or you’re otherwise there with less of a wait to tackle, then Crossroads is great. Just have a good idea what you’re waiting for, okay?

The utter boy-ness of this dinner.

Pie for the People

Need something easy cheesy beautiful to bring back to the pad for dinner after a long day in the park? Pie for the People is for you (…the people). They have all the pizza toppings you could wish for, plus a few of their own creative concoctions (I like their Dean Martin, with sausage, peppers, onions, and mushrooms, or their buffalo chicken pizza). Also mozz sticks and wings, and simple desserts. You really can’t go wrong. Just get your order in early — they tend to pop off on warm weekend nights.

Joshua Tree Coffee

If you just need a coffee without a whole breakfast situation, JT Coffee is the stop. Each morning the local coffee-roaster sets up a little fold-out table in their shadeless courtyard from which to take orders, which are brought out one-by-one by the staff from their cafe space — or rather, they used to. In the last year the intrepid Hi Dez roasters opened a sleek, long-time-coming front of house space to order coffee and peruse their merch (though seating is all still outside). It’s a nice, quiet spot to sit and chat in the morning, with good people-watching as groups of visiting friends and families and the occasional local swing through on their way into the park or out of town or just to get a moment away for themselves. But once the sun is up and beating down, best take that coffee wherever you’re going.

Frontier Cafe

The High Desert’s best, and only proper cafe-style coffee shop. Meaning, LA-style coffee shop — but don’t hold that against it. Frontier is distinctly local, with eclectic decor and sometimes haphazard seating. Where LA coffee shops are so ubiquitously sleek and minimalist, Frontier is warm, welcoming, and of its place (I’d compare it to local coffee haunts like Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach). They serve an excellent breakfast sandwich that may sound like it has too much going on (there’s arugula, tomato, and herb mayo) but in the eating is indisputably justified. They have Wi-Fi — but don’t be that guy when they’re busy.

Jelly Donut

Against all odds, I’ve never been to Jelly Donut. It is undeniably a place I should have been to by now. But I just ain’t been. It’s a donut shop in Twentynine Palms, right off the highway, that also dishes out Vietnamese food in the lunch and/or evening hours…kind of. Sometimes. Go find out for yourself. At minimum, the donuts look as fantastic as they do at most Viet-owned LA donut shops (that is, they’re exactly the donuts you are looking for, no more, no less).

Sonic

PSA: There’s a Sonic in Yucca Valley. Do with this information what you will — as long as what you will do is visit Sonic. If you don’t go to Sonic at least once on your visit to the desert, then you simply haven’t been to the desert. That’s the law.

Windmill Market

So there’s this place. About a mile east of the 62 (the highway that takes you north from the 10 into the High Desert) in North Palm Springs, at the intersection of Dillon Road and Indian Canyon Drive, a corner store surrounded by tumbleweeds, called Windmill Market. At Windmill Market there are snacks and drinks, of course, but also a kitchen turning out hot dogs, tacos, sandwiches, and the occasional special. They do have date shakes — you should get one. Then take your spoils into their eclectic, welcoming, homey back patio, grab a lawn chair, and enjoy an hour or two of entirely unexpected backyard relaxation in the middle of somewhere.

Hike & Scramble

Hemingway

I’ve spent a good, probably 75-80% of my time in Joshua Tree in, around, amongst, on top of, and staring up at this formation. It’s called Hemingway for fairly obvious reasons once you’re standing in front of it; it’s a brash, imposing, brutish collection of massive rocks upjutting from the desert ground. Coming from the Joshua Tree entrance (as opposed to the easterly Twentynine Palms entrance), you pass a few tall hills and impressive boulders worth a stop; but Hemingway is the first that demands your attention.

For those like me who like to scramble, Hemingway promises nearly endless routes up, under, and around its various boulder piles, an infinite playground to lift, scrape, balance, and leap — as long as you’re not too worried about minor scrapes and injuries. There are also a number of spots for actual rock climbing, if the rope-pulley-piton route is more your thing. I would not, however, recommend it highly for walkers or hikers. There are no real trails around Hemingway — so if you don’t plan on hurling yourself against some rocks,* unless you just need a wee break from the car, there are other places for you than this.

*A general, hopefully needless, realistically necessary note for all scramblers and rock climbers: Take care of those rocks. They’re sturdy, but not invincible. Do not displace them. Respect the land. Take your trash. Or be cursed. Thx.

Hidden Valley

Hidden Valley is one of the bigger draws of Joshua Tree, which you can tell first by the size of its own dedicated parking lot, and second by the dozens to hundreds of people who seem to be there perpetually.

But its popularity is not without merit. The Hidden Valley trail is a fairly simple, short loop, with a few fun little hills, narrow-ish squeezes, and asymmetric rock-carved steps for the adults to take one at a time and for the kids to leap over with complete, heart-stopping abandon. The trail eventually opens up into the titular Hidden Valley, which is not really so much a valley as it is a broken ceramic bowl, a central flat shrubby desert area surrounded on most sides by tall heaps of boulders (that are, again, terrific to climb). Here you and your group (or just you) can proceed along the loop trail, perusing informational signage chock full o’ plant facts, probably finding yourself back at the parking lot in 30-40 minutes, maybe an hour at a more leisurely pace. Or you can venture (carefully) off the path and investigate the boulders and the lizards and the spiky stabby plants and, yes, the Joshua Trees up close.

Hidden Valley’s great because it’s a microcosm of Joshua Tree as a whole; if you only have time for one stop in the park, for whatever reason, this should be it.

Ryan Mountain

Reader, be ye warned: this bad boy is a steepie. It’s stairs all the way up, and stairs all the way down. There is, I think, one flat-ish part about ¾ of the way up that offers a reprieve, or the false promise of completion depending how you’re feeling by that point (it’s probably the latter).

But Ryan Mountain also offers one of the best views in the whole park, dwarfing all the teensy boulders that seem so imposing up close (more like Baby Hemingway). So if a good view is your thing, and you’re okay with your legs getting eaten alive by this short mountain king, then Ryan’s worth a stop.

Keys View

A long drive to a decent view. Honestly, not essential, but a lot of folks seem to think it is. The one time I drove up there I was a bit disappointed and surrounded by people who appeared to be the same. So unless, again, views are really your thing, I wouldn’t bother.

Everything Else

I haven’t done any of the longer hikes, the Boy Scout Trail or to Keys’ Ranch or the Lost Mine. I’m sure they’re good, haven’t heard any bad reviews. I’m mostly there to climb stuff and get a little hurt, so if that’s not really your thing, I’m sorry I don’t have too much to offer you. But they’re worth checking out at least.

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Share your own JT recommendations and experiences in the comments below with complete, heart-stopping abandon. They may even make a future update to this list. At the least, they might make some other reader’s day.