Friday morning I got up after Zak & Megan left the room. I made shitty room coffee and drank it while I ate the home smoked ribs (one beef, one pork) and the homemade coffee cake that neck gave me for a snack when I saw him at breakfast the day before. Then I stood on the balcony enjoying the hot morning wind and watched Steph & Kenji wander around the hot pools down below.
At checkout time we all trundled our suitcases to the lobby and paired into our cars, stopped off at the Stater Bros. Grocery and then hit the highway. It’s not too far from Desert Hot Springs to 29Palms, so we took the long route through Joshua Tree National Park. It was hot and getting hotter, and the landscape is the perfect spooky desert scene. Me and Steph, and Gary and Kenji got out of our cars every so often to check out big rocks, spiney cacti (once a spine went completely through Gary’s flip-flop into his foot).
At the 29Palms Inn we checked into our spacious accommodations. A large room adjoining a small guesthouse shared with 3 couples, me and another friend who would be arriving the next day. The Inn is spread out over a few acres. Bungalows and cabins, some built as early as the 1920s are scattered around all over. In the middle is the restaurant and pool where we all went and had a salad and chilled for a while before getting ready to head off to Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace to have dinner and crash the rehearsal dinner.
Dinner was meaty and delicious, and the country/rock band got people moving early. Line dancing to start (unfortunately finished before I was done eating) and later the frenzied dancing of drunk girls in a wedding party. It reminded me a lot of college, and not just because 10 or 15 kids from school were in the group… but that didn’t hurt.
Finally, the band went quiet and we all piled back into cars and made the trip back to the Inn. Kenji and I had stocked up on beer and liquor for the guesthouse fridge that afternoon, and strangely about 30 people showed up to enjoy it after the rehearsal dinner event. Including the bride and groom. A bridesmaid was finally able to convince Whitney (the bride) that she had to get her beauty sleep, and everyone shuffled out and stumbled back to their own cabins. Conveniently, my bed was only a few feet away, and I fell into it and was out like a light.
Posted by allison at September 23, 2005 09:39 AM