Avantwall

On any great road trip. Detours are both expected and accepted. Well At least to us. On our way from Arizona to California  The plan was to go straight to Santa Monica. No stops. No detours.

We had seen signs for Joshua Trees, and living in Los Angeles ( The Land of Buzz Words) we had been hearing about it for months. Not one to miss out on the opportunity we took our first detour.

We thought we were going to see a couple of trees on the side of the road, and be on our merry way, but boy were we wrong! We entered the park and immediately lost service and drove deeper and deeper into the park. 

We got inspired with the calm of the whole area, and decided the best idea would be to venture into the park. Please note that no one knew we were there, we had no service and we thought we wanted to go on trails that no one was on, oh and we have never hiked in our lives. This is going to be fun!

We found a remote spot with no cars parked, and not there would've been because it was 6:00 AM. We decided that if we were going to venture into the park we would stick on trail and try to take great photos from there.

That quickly went out the Door. On the trail we found trees in the distance that were just "cooler". What that actually meant beats me, and you would have to ask my overly-caffeinated past self. Our method to finding our way back ? rocks. 

The deeper we would venture, we would mark that spot with a interesting rock that we would find. What we would later come to realize is that there are a lot of rocks in a national park, and all of them are interesting.

At this point we knew we were lost. So might as well not think about it, and venture deeper into the park. 

Now at this point you might view this as reckless, but actually there was a good reason. the deeper we ventured the more interesting the Joshua Trees became. They were three times the size and undisturbed by human interaction. 

It was intoxicating. We were there in the early morning so it was as if the sun was chasing away the darkness. the further we ventured The trees came to form what would seem like a scene to a movie.

There was a drama to them that yielded the most incredible pictures. It was so peaceful and quiet that you would just sit and stare. It didn't matter that we were lost, or that no one know where we were. It really brought us into the present and enjoy everything around us. We were just happy to be there.

Once our battery ran out ( of course we didn't bring extra) we realized that it was going to be  bit harder than expected to get back to the Avantmobile. Our rock system was not helping us and we just walked in circle for about 30 minutes. 

We then heard voices in the distance that were getting closer and closer. We sat there and waited for someone to show up. Eventually a group of hikers passed us. Our pride didn't allow us to tell them that we were lost. We pretended to take photos with a camera that was out of battery, and followed them, until we could finally see where we parked!

We eventually got out of park and regained a signal, and each had dozens of messaged and missed calls. As you can tell from this story we don't have the best track record for when comes to these things, but it made for a great story and some of our favorite pieces on Avantwall!