My First Trip to California

A friend invited me to hang out in Los Angeles, so I made the drive out there. I had a very good experience stopping at Petrified Forest National Park on my first trip to Arizona, so when I arrived at my hotel in Indio that mid afternoon, I decided to fire up AllTrails and see if there was anything cool nearby. Indeed there was, not far outside of town.

I arrived in what I thought was a prepared state! I had a backpack, lots of water, a fully charged phone and some decent clothes, and other hiking supplies I packed up from home. I immediately started to take pictures. I was totally fascinated by this barren, gold-tinted landscape. This was one of my first experiences exploring the desert, and my fascination drove me to later pick up the "van life" and take the thousands of pictures you can find on this site.

I progressed through the trail at a slow pace, taking in the scenery and snapping lots of pictures. The big attraction on this trail is the palm trees. Surrounded by barren desert, these groves of palms stand alone, in very specific places. One such grove is at the bottom of some slopes, which I imagine carries run-off water from rain to support their growth. Another grove is in a small canyon, where the trail leads directly to. This was the grove that I was in, and took pictures of.

This was a very good first experience in California. I would later discover the chaos of the state, but I was very happy when I was exploring this trail. I was so wrapped up in this hike, taking many pictures, that it started to get quite dark. No problem, I thought, cause I packed a headlamp. Instead of heading back the direction I came, I decided to try going down the rest of the looping trail. Eventually it got dark enough that I was reaching for my headlamp.

Except...I forgot it at home. I decided it would probably be better to go back to the part of the trail I used to get to the canyon, and with that last bit of setting sunlight, I ran up the small mountain as fast as I could. It was steep, and I was going very fast, pushing myself really hard to make it up there before there was no more light. I ended up overdoing it, was so exhausted that I was very nauseous, so I had to rest for a bit. After that, I had to navigate back to my car in darkness, as there wasn't even any moonlight to guide me. The light on my phone sucked and didn't really help much. Since I had made it back to original trail, I wasn't really feeling lost at least. I snapped some cool pictures of the city lights as I carefully trekked back to the car without light. At first I was panicked, but it turned out to be okay.

I slept well that night, and continued on my merry way to LA. A couple observations after reaching the inland empire: the sky was tainted with smog, and every exit on the interstate led to neighborhoods instead of anywhere I could stop or get gas. I want to say it was like that for 50 miles, but that's purely from memories long ago.

Later trips back to California led to my vehicle getting broken into and me scraping up the side of a parked car on a very narrow street. I've never really liked the bustle of the cities, and all the natural attractions were very busy...except this one. I think this hike to the palms was my most positive experience in the whole state. It was a lot of fun and I definitely suggest checking this trail out.