Joshua Tree

Staying at the High Desert Hotel, just outside of Joshua Tree.  Took our time getting down the road today, stopping here and there to stretch our legs, and arrange things for Oliver--our rabbit who is riding down the road in the backseat in a crate.  We stopped in Lucerne Valley for dinner and Yelp pointed us to an amazingly delicious Chinese restaurant.  At the end of the meal, the owner brought us fortune cookies, almond cookies, toothpicks, and a hot towel (OK, really a hot paper napkin, but still).

Most of the day, the road looked like this:

But today wasn't really about sightseeing.  It was about catching up with Natalie.  We haven't had the chance to talk for such an uninterrupted stretch of time since...well, since our last road trip in 1999.  It's awesome.  We kept asking each other, "Have I already told you this?" And the answer was usually "no."  There just isn't enough time, in our normal phone or weekend conversations to get into all of the lesser details of the people we know and the experiences we've had.  What a rare and wonderful opportunity this is.