Day three of our desert road trip, we decided to “take it easy” with a short jaunt to the Yucca Valley and up hill to Pioneertown, which is at a higher elevation and promised to deliver slightly cooler temperatures.

I did not like the drive up into the mountains and so it was difficult at first to appreciate the views. What goes up must come down and I spent much of the drive nervously anticipating a horrible drop-off around each bend. Fortunately, that did not happen and the scariest part of the ride was when I yelled at Davin to do a u-turn so we could hit up a big yard sale that I spotted too late.

There’s something about perusing a yard sale with massive Joshua trees (Yucaa brevifolia) and dry, desert mountain-scapes as the backdrop.

I really wanted to take home the middle handpainted saw seen in the photo at the top of this page. It’s depiction of the Joshua tree-filled landscape would have made a great trip souvenir and a wonderful addition to the outer wall of my ramshackle shed at home, but alas, it was far too large and awkward to fit into my luggage.

These last photos were taken when we stopped along the road above Pioneertown.

I really, really, really wanted to bring home these beautiful terra cotta bowl planters (only $10 for the big ones.) They were huge and even now I mourn the arrangement of succulents or the bowl full of flowering thyme that could have been, but again it came down to the luggage issue. Still, I did purchase one small souvenir of the sale: an old black horseshoe. I saw old horse shoes for sale just about everywhere on this trip. It’s not a surprise given it is The West.