No trip to Joshua Tree would be complete without a visit to the Integraton, the weird cultish dome where people go to meditate in a 'sound bath'. Supposedly legend has it that aliens telepathically contacted a man named George van Tassel and gave him healing methods and instructions to build the structure over highly electromagnetic grounds.
Inside the dome you can lie side by side with about 50 other people and be surrounded in sounds created from a quartz bowl, which is supposed to realign your chakras and put you in a blissful state of euphoria. Doesn't that sound relaxing? I'm not sure if I was too caffeinated or just bothered by the stranger snoring just inches away from me, but it seemed like a scam to me. The final straw was when the girl next to me rolled over and accidentally smacked me in the face. I laid there for what seemed to be an excruciatingly long eternity, having completely given up on hopes of relaxation and now just contemplating just how much money this place was raking in from suckers like us.
Breakfast at Western Coffee alleviated my hangry mood, as it seemed the most Lynchian of all diners I've seen on the trip so far. Not just because of the random decor and characters who worked there, but the fact that we look over and see Mike and Mike(!) grinning and waving at us simultaneously from a booth across the room. Weirdness abounds in this town.
One of the local hippies recommended we check out Giant Rock down this long dirt road. After driving for what seemed like miles, we came upon a pretty big rock. Was this giant rock? How is one to know? It was considerably larger than most rocks I've seen. Yet somehow our instincts told us to keep driving. Then finally in the distance…
Giant! Rock! The massive boulder lay at the end of a landing strip I can only imagine was a welcome mat intended for visiting spaceships. Apparently some crazy prospector built a room for himself beneath the rock and lived there in the 30s and 40s, until he died in a self-detonated explosion to avoid the police. Since then the rock has split, exposing it's white insides, and the graffiti and beer cans of careless youth have made their mark. Feeling triumphant, we spent the rest of the day leisurely cruising the local thrift shops.
In the evening we searched for an old bowling alley, and it was the perfectly retro Yucca Bowl that we found. After a few fiercely competitive games and some brazen trash talking, we headed to Mojave Sands, a beautifully renovated '50s era motel that is now minimal desert modern, with rooms looking out onto a lovely courtyard.
This quote on the bathroom wall of Pappy's pretty much sums it up, and in essence this whole blog. Sadly the next day we began the drive to San Francisco, energy mills and chola trees fading in the distance. We stopped to see the Cabazon dinosaurs and had our last breakfast at the Wheel Restaurant/diner, famously featured in Pee wee's Big Adventure, the perfect ending before heading back to normalcy.
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