As for Palmdale…we saw lots of cell towers “disguised” as evergreen or palm trees, lots of Tesla charging stations and high prices for gas and everything else. It had us itching to be done with California for good and we forged on. Well, Twenty-nine Palms had even more of that attitude and also RV parks that would not allow any RVs over 10 years old to stay…EVEN FOR ONE NIGHT. I was not really prepared for that type of regulation and attitude. I thought it was considered pretty cool to get an older, used RV outfitted with solar and some upgrades and use it to travel, live and work as “digital nomads”… So the discrimination was an interesting experience.
We were kind of pooped when we rolled into Twenty-nine Palms and the gate to Joshua Tree and the ranger told us spots were “first come first serve” and she wasn’t sure if there were any available spots so we should just “go look for an unoccupied spot and the ranger would come around the next day to take the campground fee”. Sounded good. We were tired, thirsty and hungry so drove in and around to find some spot for the night.
Joshua Tree is beautiful and dramatic with giant rock formations that look like all sorts of strange animals doing strange things… We saw a few empty spots that we could not fit the RV into and almost gave up on finding anything and then saw a great empty spot with an easy pull through. Yay!
Chris was happy to pop open a beer and get a fire started and I got rolling on some dinner. We had enough time to do a little exploring, take some photos and enjoy the fire before it got dark and cold… It actually got pretty darned cold and for some reason our generator would not turn over so that we could use the space heater so we bundled up and went to sleep.
Well, some crazy lady with a high power flashlight woke me up banging on the window next to my bed around 11pm or so. Woke me up and totally freaked me out. I could not really understand wtf she was going on about but saw they had a big RV and she said “we were in her spot and had to move NOW!” I told her it was first come, first serve…how could this be “her spot”? She wasn’t really making any sense and I was not about to go out and face her in that way so I told her “the ranger said it was first-come, first-serve” so we found an empty spot and parked.
Finally I just told her to talk to the ranger. I managed to get back to sleep after she left.
Then, about 45 minutes later, came one of those knocks “of authority” at the door….it was a ranger. Then HE told us we were parked in a reserved spot and not only did we have to leave immediately, we would be ticketed for it. WTH?

Chris went outside to deal with everything, I stayed inside (damn, it was cold!) and just communicated through the window. I wondered how the hell this could happen in a camp area where there were no reservations and the ranger walked over to a bush at the end of the spot, pushed back the branches and showed us that on a post inside the bush there was a reservation slip tacked up. Another WTH moment… (Welcome to California, you dumb Oregonians!)
We asked where we could park, instead and he told us the only place nearby was the casino parking lot about 2-3 miles away. Then he wrote us a hefty ticket for a few hundred smackaroos and agreed to escort us to the park entrance (we both have horrible night vision). We were tired AF and super bummed, shocked and confused but I had already mapped out the location of the casino as a possible boondock in case the state park had no vacancy.
We got there in one piece and bundled up again and went to bed…it must have been near freezing that night and we had no heat. Even wearing sweats and wool socks and all the blankets and a wool poncho heaped on top of my bed I still shivered for a while before I got warm enough to fall asleep for a bit.
It was not a restful night. We were totally burned out the next morning but decided to push on all the way to Quartsite, Arizona just in order to get the hell out of California, for good!
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