At the first spotting of a Joshua Tree on the sie of the road, we knew we were about to step into a pretty special place. The energy of Joshua Tree was really relaxed, and without sounding like a complete hippy, really spiritual.
As we walked into the Joshua Tree Inn, we were met with 3 elder people sitting around a plastic table. At first I thought they might be sitting around playing cards, but no, they were just sitting around in relative silence with a carton of Camels in hand. They introduced themselves as three preachers from Oklahoma who had been sent on a "mission from God." They didn't know what the mission was, and had never heard of Joshua Tree, but one of them had a dream about the Joshua Tree Inn and saw a vision of the place, so they came out. Apparently it was exactly how he saw it in the dream. The woman of the bunch was 78 with a walking frame and had never left Oklahoma before then. Apparently she had been "healed" so many times by god, through one of the preachers who had "had cancers fall off into my hands." I guess if you have god healing you all the time you don't need to kick your pack'a'day habbit… She ended up being a bit of fun and really got into some of our Australian sarcasm as we skeptically listened to her fellow Christian followers. Later the preachers thought that we had something to do with the mission. The preacher had another dream about Australia and "Troy" and thought I might be married to a Troy. Me married?? Ha! Anyway he gave me his business card, and told me to get in contact if I thought of any Troy.
We had one night booked to sleep in the bed that Gram Parsons carked it in. How bloody exciting. It was a nice big king sized bed and really comfortable. I was hoping his ghost would come visit me in the night, but no go. The next day I was chatting to a girl in the pool whose mother worked at the Inn. It is apparently really haunted and strange stuff happens all the time. Her mum was cleaning the bathroom once and the shower just turned on. We then realized that one day was not enough, so we booked an extra night to take in some of the good ol' desert vibes.
After heading to the Joshua Tree National Park (at 5.30am!) we decided to get some locally made kambucha from one of the few cafes on the strip. We met an amazing woman, Hilary, who let us share her table. We got talking and she invited us to come out to her house later that arvo, which we took her up on. She had a great back yard that overlooked an amazing desert view with cacti and chipmunks running around the place. It was the most relaxing place in the world, and after spending our last few days driving around LA, it was exactly what we needed. We were both pretty ready to cancel the rest of the trip and move into Hilary's.