The week before Memorial Day weekend, Riley messaged me from work and told me he booked us an Airbnb in a place he didn't disclose and that we were going to be skipping town on Memorial Day weekend, Sunday to Monday. All he told me was that the house was very secluded, it would be warm, and there was a bounty of art and shopping in the town nearby.
I needed no convincing; I made my glee known to him and all week I kept reminding myself of my prize: a weekend with only my love.
It has been about three months since we came home from the honeymoon; I have missed the excitement of being strangers together in an unfamiliar town. There is a certain thrill I feel at the thought of being away, alone, with the best person I have ever known, in a new place and totally reliant on only our own decisions and wants, where the time is only ours. (Being on our own terms is one of the gems of marriage we've been savoring deeply.)
We threw a day and night's worth of things into his duffel bag on Saturday night. Sunday, straight from church, we got gas and began to drive.
I could see, from his GPS, that it was going to be a long drive-- about 3.5 hours. I didn't care; I had my crochet work, my best friend, and a very expansive Spotify queue to keep me happy.
We drove through hills and small mountains. No, I don't remember which highway we were on. I was busy crocheting and enjoying the fact that I wasn't the one driving. I only know the sky was clear and the hills were turning brown for the summer, but they were somehow still very beautiful. (I have grown tired of complaining about the flat expanse of brown plains that surrounds Bakersfield. How can I complain when the sky is so tall and wide and blue, and the land sweeps upwards into the mountains on the horizon the way it does?)
After those 3.5 hours, at about 4:00pm, as we got into more populated land, Riley said, "Welcome to the desert oasis." Palm Springs! It was new to both of us. I was excited to be exploring somewhere that wasn't the coast; I love the sea, more than many places, but it's been such a long time since I've visited any town that wasn't a beach town. (Of course, he could have taken me anywhere and I would have been just as ready. I'll go anywhere with him.)
He turned onto a dusty road of broken asphalt and we rattled along through cacti, yucca trees, and small houses nestled into the desert land. We turned and drove for another thousand feet and finally arrived at our Airbnb: a tiny, bright pink house with a white picket fence.
There was a little hot tub in the back, and further down the hill, also belonging to the house, a deck with a little cowboy pool and two blue wooden lounge chairs--fully bathed in sun and surrounded by desert brush.
As soon as we set our things inside, we changed into our bathing suits and went down to the deck. We listened to Bob Marley, and I lay in the sun while Riley smoked a cigar. We talked endlessly and stood in the pool when we got too warm. We savored the look of the surrounding hills and mountains, layered further and further back into the sky.
That night after dinner, we laid on the bed with cups of coffee and watched a little TV. Once it was dark we enjoyed the solitude of the hot tub and the clarity of the stars above us, so much brighter and more numerous than the stars in our Bakersfield sky.
We came inside and got trail mix with little glasses of wine and watched Nacho Libre until past midnight.
We slept like rocks through the night until we were woken by the sun flooding in through the window shades. The desert realm was clearer and bluer and seemed wider in the morning than it had been the day before in the afternoon. When I drew back the shades, the whole place turned white and shining.
We spent the morning in delicious slowness, getting dressed and packing away all of our things, wishing we would've had more time here (we're going to keep that little house in our minds for future trips) but ready to get out and explore. We drove about thirty minutes into actual Palm Springs (we were just in Yucca Valley), and after a late breakfast, we began to walk.
The city was warm and full of sun, yet we were enjoying the warmth as we walked; it felt appropriate for being in the desert. We found a Palm Springs magnet for the fridge (we've decided we want our refrigerator to be a gallery of all the places we've been) and a Palm Springs postcard to add to my wall.
There was a little 1930's general store museum created from a collection of authentic 1930's household items-- cleaning supplies, beauty products, hardware and tools, dry goods, boxed/tinned foods. It was a little wonderful to see how my shelves and cupboards at home were beginning to look like the shelves of this store: boxes of baking soda and washing soda, dry goods in glass jars, oil lamps and candles to light our way at night.
We found a thrift store as well (it is criminal, in my mind, not to seek out a thrift store in every city you visit) and most of everything in there was too highly priced to take home any souvenirs, except for a dartboard, still in its plastic, that caught Riley's eye. We purchased that and went back out into the heat and light.
Our next quest was to find smoothies. This wasn't hard, as there were about six smoothie joints to choose from in our area. He ordered this dreamy cinnamon vanilla date thing that I want to try and recreate at home; it tasted like a milkshake. I had a VERY pink smoothie with dragon fruit and raspberries.
Sufficiently refreshed and full of fruit, we considered leaving then; it was getting later into the afternoon and we'd seen about all we wanted to see. But Riley decided we weren't done yet. He pulled up directions to the nearest art museum, and there we went.
We used some of our leftover honeymoon cash to pay for admission and spent the next hour wandering slowly through the exhibits, admiring or laughing (quietly), depending on the art. (If you've ever been to a contemporary art museum, you will know what I'm talking about. Some of it is brilliant and some of it is... well... a plank of wood on the wall with a red stripe through it. I've never been more inspired.) Anyway, it was a really enjoyable way to end the trip; it was freezing cold in there, and the smell of paint and echo of voices over the vast granite floors satisfied something inside me that I can't be bothered to define with words. Museums just... do that.
When we'd combed all three floors and seen everything we could, we went back to the car, defrosting the instant we stepped outside, and set the GPS to home.
There was traffic in the first leg of our trip, but we didn't care; we listened to the Office Ladies the whole way home and I worked on my scrap blanket.
We have since decided that from now on, destinations more than two hours away deserve more than one night's stay. But neither one of us regrets anything about the trip. Half the fun of traveling is the getting there, if you've the right company. And he will always be my favorite company.
