For Spring Break from university, my family and I decided to travel down South to one of the most beautiful deserts around.
We stayed in a refurbished Homestead out in the small and sandy town of Twentynine Palms, something out of an old movie, but with modern decor and absolutely no neighbors. The drive in took us down a side road off Highway 62 for a few miles, and that's where the pavement ended. We continued for another 5 miles on a one-lane dirt road only to arrive at out destination in the middle of an absolute dust storm.
The desert light was amazing, as were the MILLIONS of Hummingbird Moth caterpillars that littered the ground. I'm not kidding when I say millions - coming into camp, the roads were speckled with what we thought were small rocks, but upon closer inspection the entire road was literally crawling with these little buggers. They crawled all over our campsite all day long in search of little shrubs to munch on.
Of course we had to spend some of our short time down south in the stunning Joshua Tree National Park, somewhere I've wanted to visit since I was a child. We hiked for hours and I got lost climbing the rock caverns, finding the top and scanning the vast valley with its rock formations, twists and turns, and Joshua Trees.
Being a Los Angeles native, I'm one to know the lack of stars overhead, always searching for the least light-polluted areas to drive out of the city for, but this was something else. The stars came out in full-force, brighter and more celestial than I'd seen before.
Needless to say, but I'll be back again.