JOSHUA TREE

Turns out some people have jobs to do, and Tom is one of those people, so he wasn't around during the day today and Nina left for Thanksgiving with her Mum first thing this morning, so Max and I took ourselves off to the desert for an adventure.

Nina very generously lent us her sweet sweet ride, and we drove off in the sunny sunshine to the Joshua Tree National Park, about two hours' drive from Tom and Nina's home.

It was lovely weather this morning and Nina's car has the facility for playing an ipod through the speakers, so we put the top down, put the Beach Boys on the stereo and headed off on our adventure.

It felt really good to be doing something proper with our day, rather than mooching about the streets of West Hollywood, or whatever, and I'm so pleased we made the effort.

En route, we passed a gigantic wind farm. My Dad hates energy windmills and is campaigning against them popping up all over Dorset, but I think there's something quite cool and beautiful about lots of them in a big open space. Perhaps it's just the landscape of the future and something we have to get used to.

As well as the cool cacti there, Joshua Tree is famous for being the place that Gram Parsons (one of my all-time favourite singer/songwriters) would go and get very high, eventually dying of an overdose in room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn, aged 26. Unfortunately, we whizzed past the motel before really registering what it was, which is a shame.

Also a shame was our inability to resist the cliche of playing U2's album 'Joshua Tree' as we entered the park. I can only apologise.

The park is so cool. It's vast, with one road going through it, passing quite distinct phases. The first phase was of cool, spindly cacti, a bit like something from Dr Seuss:

The second phase was of cool yellow rocks that had been weathered and kind of rounded by centuries of erosion:

The aptly named 'Skull Rock'

We would get out of the car from time to time, to wander around and clamber over rocks. We encountered a couple of families at Arch Rock, where the two Dads were taking the very young children up onto the huge stone arch.

Harking back to my days on walks in Dorset, trying to keep up with Tom and his impetuous rock-climbing ways, I decided to clamber up onto the arch, figuring if 6-year olds could do it, it could surely be no match for me.

Oh. My. Goodness. It was freakin' terrifying. I really very nearly had a panic attack when I got up there, because it was higher than any photo could really relate and really narrow, too. Plus, it didn't help that there was a gale-force wind/slight breeze (probably the latter) threatening to blow me off onto the unforgiving rocks below. Hddrdrdrdrr.

As much as I would've liked to've hung out up there, contemplating my navel, maybe doing a bit of yoga, I waited long enough for Maxy to take a photo, then gingerly climbed back down, mostly on my ass.

We went exploring for some caves nearby, but didn't find them and frankly I'd spent all my adventurousness chips and wanted to get back in the car and hit the road!

The final phase of the park was full of cholla cacti, which apparently hop! Though I didn't see that happen:

We left the park with plenty of time before we had to be back in town for tonight's bowling extravaganza and handover to Tom and Bambi, so we decided to take the long way back and check out Palm Springs.

Big mistake.

Firstly, it was much further away than we thought and, still reeling from my New Hampshire speeding ticket and encounter with the Angriest State Trooper Ever, I wasn't too keen to whizz along the freeway in a way that I might've done in the days before my $250 fine. So it took ages to get there and I was getting really stressed about not being back in LA in time for this evening's arrangements. Plus, the weather had really clouded over, so the roof was back up on the car and the Beach Boys were no longer on the stereo.

But worst of all, Palm Springs is just a real hole. We thought it'd be a cool, art deco kind of 50s playtown for wealthy and old people, but - certainly along the main drag - it was just a weird, soulless linear town with no defining or pleasant features at all.

Fortunately we made it back in time to meet Tom and head off to a bowling alley near Tom and Bambi's flat, where we busied ourselves shooting both aliens and hoops in the arcade bit, until Tom and Bam arrived and we had a fun evening of bowling. I love to bowl. It was really sad that Nina wasn't there and I think everyone was pretty pooped after a long day at work/in the desert, but it was fun to all hang out together and I threw a few rocks before Tom officially handed Max and me off to Tom and Bambi and we adjourned to Mar Vista for the second half of our LA visit.