valentine's day part deux

now that we had the whole weekend + a day [thank you, presidents] to play, matt and i decided to peace out of la and go camping. we woke up on the 14th with no real plan except to grab our overnight gear and head out of the city. after deciding that going up to sequoia would be silly, as we would most likely get stuck in the snowstorm on the way back, we decided to head down into the desert and stay at joshua tree. neither of us had a strong desire to go there in particular, but a big storm was about to rock socal and we figured we should try to stay out of its path. plus, chris ladd told us that we MUST visit joshua tree.

we made our plan, went out separate ways to pack, get food stuffs together, and after a quick pit stop for some propane canisters, we finally hit the road around 3. we made good time and got to the desert before dark. we pulled up to the entrance only to see a small white sign on the ranger's window that said 'All Campsites Full'

....are you kidding me?
we just drove 2 1/2 hours to a place neither of us reaaaalllllyyyy wanted to go to..for WHAT?? to be told that we could either stay in an overflow campground outside of the park [uhh..i could camp in my backyard if i wanted to do that] or head back to la. we spent a good hour parked on the side of the road trying to figure out what to do. should we just keep heading east? hit the grand canyon? how about zion? ..our [rather, matt's] senses got the better of us, and we headed back the way we came. it doesn't help that joshua tree is in the middle of bumblefuck, usa. everything is 3 hours away.

we stopped at a local walmart to pick up some tire chains. at this point, we were ready to brave the snow and just head up to sequoia. upon arriving closer to home, though, we decided to swing by the house to pick up our pillows [sure would be nice to have those] and some water proof shoes for matt. once we got to the house, though, we didn't leave again. matt was tired of driving, understandably, and driving up into the mountains would add another 4 1/2 hours onto the 5 he had just done. we were both exhausted. we decided to wake up real early and head up the coast towards san simeon.