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| 12 years later on the same spot. Different car. Not tourists anymore. |
Why did we choose Joshua Tree?
The short answer: we fell in love.
I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. I’d been to Palm Springs a few times growing up, but I’d never even heard of Joshua Tree. Not once.
It wasn’t until I moved back from living in the Philippines for three years that this place even appeared on my radar.
At the time, my wife, our daughter and I were renting a room in someone’s house, dreaming about one day having our own home. We kept talking about land… something simple… planting vegetables, maybe even a few chickens. The kind of life that felt out of reach in Southern California.
Then one day, Google fed us a miracle: desert land for sale. Probably one of those old banner ads—you know, the one with the woman in the sea-shell bikini selling 5 acres for pennies.
And it worked.
So much land. So cheap. In California?
We didn’t have money. We didn’t know how to build anything. We had no idea what it cost to get water, power, septic—none of it. But the dream landed anyway.
In 2013, we finally drove out to see it.
Our car was a 1991 Honda Wagon with no AC, and we drove it into the high desert in the middle of June. I have no idea how that thing didn’t explode halfway up the grade into Morongo Valley.
When we finally rolled into Joshua Tree Village, it felt like we’d stepped into a time slip. Instagram wasn’t big yet. Joshua Tree wasn’t an influencer playground. It was just a quiet little desert town with a strange electricity in the air.
We never even made it to the National Park. We just wandered through town and eventually drove up the dirt roads behind the hospital. Parked on a rise. Looked out at the horizon.
And that was it.
We fell in love.
Not because of hype. Not because of real estate trends or travel guides. Just pure, desert spell.
We didn’t have money. We didn’t have work. But we did have a mission now:
One way or another—we would live here someday.
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