Getting Clean:

There is a new shower in town, well, in the next town. I went for my weekly shower at Coyote Corner and found it closed for the day because Ethan was having the septic pumped. We have been showering there regularly for seven years at $3 for a 7 minute token, though this year I had begun buying 33 tokens at a time so that I could use my card and thereby have a record of that expense. In fact Chris, Ethan's wife, liked that idea so much that she threw in a few more tokens – it will save their clerks a man-hour or two over time. This time Ethan sent me to Jerry's Gym in Yucca Valley.

I had in fact checked the place out about a month prior when I had stopped in to ask if one could take showers without joining the club and found that one could. They charged $4 for an unlimited shower and they also take cards. These were not private shower rooms like at Coyote; just curtained-off with a common changing area, lockers and sink. It was clean and at that time it was relatively quiet and uncrowded. I would recommend it.

Though not as convenient to our home it was nice to know that there is a backup. Other than renting a motel room or imposing on friends the alternative would be a cold shower under a 'solar' (does not necessarily mean 'warm') bag. We had in fact done this when we first arrived in 2001, though I quickly went looking for a another option. The bag eventually broke anyhow.

Since the search engines will find this I am going to add a few comments about Coyote Corner. They are open seven days, loosely 9 to 5 or 6. There are two shower rooms, each with its own key. The larger room has an orange duck attached to its key. The small shower has a blue moon attached to its key. Ask for the duck key. Not only is there more space in which to move around but also everything works as it should, for the most part, and it has a clean wooden bench. The smaller moon room is cramped, the soap shelf is gone and the wall hooks don't hold the things that are hung on them (as of May, 2008).

In the duck shower, watch out for the vertical bar that used to hold a handheld nozzle, long since stolen. I hit my left elbow on the steel head mount attached to that bar three months ago and it still hurts.

When I get the key I ask for a roll of paper, just in case. Small minded campers steal them. If you are camping, there are other places in town where paper and groceries can be bought.

The showers are well cleaned once each day. Get in there around 11:00 and you will probably be one of the first after the cleaning. Otherwise it is anybody's guess what you will find. I keep a spare floor mat in the car and take that in with me to stand on while drying off and dressing, useful if the floor is wet, filthy or winter cold. There is no heat but the sun coming through the skylight warms it up nicely, so give it a few hours on a cold day.

As I finish using my shampoo and then the soap and washcloth I set them out on the bench immediately. Otherwise it is very easy to forget them - out-of-sight; out-of-mind. The converse is also true: if you forget your soap or shampoo you will often find some there. If not, they sell hippy shampoos and soaps inside. It is also easy to forget the mat on the floor. I lay the key down next to the mat so I that I can't miss it.

There is a public recycling bin outside of the showers for cans and plastic. Otherwise, almost anything can be recycled at Wulfs Recycling the other side of Yucca Valley, 7308 Hopi Trail. From Route 62 turn north onto Pioneertown Road at the Water Canyon Coffee Co (great coffee and wireless [likewise wireless at Coyote Corner]), left on Yucca Trail until you see Wulf's big sign, left on Hopi Trail, right through the gate and into the drive-through warehouse. Unload, collect your cash and leave.

This brings up Eileen's main complaint about our west coast home: no hot water and no shower. Even after providing a secure roof, running water (albeit slow & cold), a deck, the utility house and real honest-to-god's electricity, heat, a nice car, a real fridge and a microwave, she is still unsatisfied. Therefore, finances permitting, the next project will be bringing in a large plastic water tank, setting it high enough in the hill to get some pressure, running a 2” pipe up to that tank for filling and a ¾” pipe down to the trailer sink and an enclosed shower with changing room and to a hot water unit, hopefully heated by the new solar system – or by propane.

King Of The Hill:

One day on my way back from the dentist I came across a new snake. I had trouble getting a good profile with my camera because she kept turning towards me preparing to strike. This snake was about a foot long and had alternating dark grey and white bands the full length of its body. I believe it was a young King Snake. This was about a mile from my place and I realize now that (if it was a King snake) I should have brought her home. Apparently they are good neighbors to have around because as King of the hill, they actively rid the area of more dangerous snakes, and of course mice and rats.

Ribs, Music And Dance:

I would like to keep this a secret in the sense that I wish the Beach Boys and others had never sung “California dreamin'” and that Patty Page had declined to tell the world about “Ole Cape Cod”, but the secret is already way out. We have discovered a new hangout that makes all similar places pale by comparison, especially for their barbecued ribs. It is in Pioneertown, a place financed by successful cowboy actors Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and others a long time ago to recreate the old west. A number of cowboy movies that you watch late at night were in fact filmed there. Pioneertown is authentic, right down to the permeable dust and the saddle worn tack.

Unfortunately the profuse vegetation of the surrounding area and some outlying ranches and homes were leveled by a ferocious firestorm a few years ago. A determined bunch of heroic fire fighters and residents did manage to save the town.

About a half hour from our home, the place I'm talking about is Pappy & Harriet's Palace, really good food, often good music and dancing to everything from 50's rock to Louisiana country. We danced to part of the Shadow Mountain Band. A couple members were out sick but the 3 that played got a good beat going. Even the waitresses were dancing across the floor with plates of food in their arms. The thriftstore allstars of Joshua Tree, Dave Gleason, Haale, Stonehoney, 007 & The Souls, Paul Chesne, and many others entertain on a fairly regular basis. The dance floor is made of old worn planks so you have to be careful where you put your feet, but it is danceable.

We went there 3 times this year, once with Ron and Lauren. During that visit the waitress lost my credit card. Everybody was searching and I was getting ready to tear the roof down when a pretty young woman approached and said “Is this yours?”. Her 3 year old son had found it.

They are open Thursday through Monday and if you want a good seat you make a reservation, though on our last visit we were given a front row table because the reservist was late; their loss; our gain.


While on the subject of bars, Eileen drags me to the Joshua Tree Saloon twice a week – really; after she returns east I do not go there. I drink at home and spend that time doing something useful on the computer or sitting and thinking through the project that I am working on. Nor is Eileen a bar nut, per se; what she likes are the almost free meals that she does not have to cook - Monday night chili dogs (with sauerkraut, etc) and Wednesday night tacos. 25 cents each.

If we are lucky, David is there with his homemade “HEP YERSELF” taco fixin's: spicy sour cream, refried beans and other toppings. A Special Forces veteran (almost as good as a Marine) in Vietnam, he is a local who gets around in his old souped up VW Beetle. He emanated from roughly the same New Jersey area that I did at about the same time a few decades ago.

On almost all those nights we would grab a pool table and play for hours, each sipping our original beer until the end, having fun, bull shooting (Eileen's words) with locals and visitors. Unfortunately Eileen did not have the same luck as she did in the card game mentioned below (past tense is correct: wrote it first and returned here later, but you don't need to know that); I generally wiped her off the table each and every time (almost) though I am not a good player at all.

While checking to make sure I got the above nights correct (I didn't), I came across an interesting New York Times article about one man's' take on the area: Where the Rebel Meets the Road in Joshua Tree. To exemplify what he said in the article, it was a long haired spaced out hippy in our writer's club that first told me about Joshua Tree in 1967. He said he journeys there periodically as a pilgrim to bask in its cosmic resonance, or something like that, since it is precisely opposite Jerusalem on the planet. (I have not confirmed this.) It was a few months later that I saw the classified ad in the local paper and decided to check it out.

Copyright © 2008, Van Blakeman