What to do when you end up in the wrong Ontario.

Imagine hearing that you are going to spend a week in Manhattan and Ontario. That's great news! Springtime in NYC is like no other. Anytime spent in Canada with it's friendly people, hot Prime Minister and abundance of vegetarian restaurants (even the hot dog cart vendors always have veggie dogs!) is always a pleasure. Hell yeah! Now imagine you take a closer look at the fine print and things are not as they seem. You are actually going to Manhattan, Kansas and Ontario, California. Not so great. This was my life.  I was on a tour of places named after much cooler places.  To quote a friend "Where next? Paris, Texas?"

I tried to make the best of the situation. I found out that the next town over from Manhattan, Wamego, had a Wizard of Oz museum and winery. Even better, there was a silo that the military had build for missile testing which had gone on to become the site of the country's preeminent LSD manufacturing lab and now accepted visitors. Score, score and score!! Rental cars were prohibitively expensive so I looked into public transportation. Here is where the plans derailed fabulously. After calling the museum, I learned that there was indeed a shuttle that runs from Manhattan to Wamego. The catch is that you need to call at least 24 hours before to reserve this public bus (?!). The catch to the catch, try and find a reservation link or phone number on their site ...I dare you. I eventually found a number, called on Saturday to make a reservation for Monday and was told that I was too late because they do not take reservations on the weekend. I needed to reserve for Monday on Friday. I was told this by a person, not an automated system. The person who spent ten minutes explaining this bizzaro system to me could have probably jotted down my reservation in two minutes tops. Long story short, Kansas is weird and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get to Wamego. Part one of this journey was a bust.

Next up, Ontario, which is essentially a strip-mall laden suburb of LA. Options: I could take an hour long commute into LA and hit up my usual spots or I could look for something new to salvage this boondoggle. Option 2 sounded better. I stumbled across the idea of visiting Joshua Tree National Park and a plan was born.

Straddling the Mojave and the Colorado desert, the park promised no shortage of dramatic landscapes. Also, I figured, if it was good enough for Bono, it was good enough for me.  I rented a car, grabbed some friends and drove east for an hour and a half. Once there, I beelined it to the visitors center and asked them to devise a plan for us. This park is huge, the trails vary wildly in degrees of difficulty and sadly I had no camping gear with me so this would only be a day trip.  I needed guidance.

The woman at the counter whipped out a map and a highlighter and five minutes later, we had an itinerary. We drove through 49 Palms and entered the park through the north entrance, the least crowded on this gorgeous spring day.

Our first stop was the Belle campsite and its imminently climbable rock formations.  A guy playing acoustic guitar from the back of his camper set the perfect soundtrack as we scrambled across the terrain taking photos and marveling at the beauty that lay before us.

Shirt by the very cool Miami street artist Atomiko

We had learned that the Cholla Cactus (or as this prickly beast is deceptively known, the Teddy Bear cactus) is currently in bloom so our next stop was the Cholla Cactus Garden. Due to the number of visitors in the park, the 1/4 mile loop was pretty crowded and very little desert tranquility was to be found but the cacti still managed to put on an impressive show.

Hunger  called so we continued to the Split Rock picnic site.

You want to know how cool this park is.  They shut down this trail to make sure that a pair of nesting Red-Tailed Hawks were not disturbed.

 Dick Mountain/ Hard Cock Cafe/ Pinga Peak or possibly a squirrel's tail. Tomato/ tomatoe

We continued on to one of the park's most popular formations, Skull Rock. There is a big sign along the road that shows you exactly where to find it. We parked the car and walked past the sign, the rock itself and eventually the entirety of the trail.

We blazed our own path (read: we got lost af) and found plenty of rocks that could easily be described as Skull-ish.

There is definitely a face here.

...and here too.

Up and over we continued until we came out on the other side of the hill and had to try to double back to where we had left the car.

Blame it on the heat but this tree yelled Van Gogh to me.

Pro tip: once you are lost and facing uncertain prospects, find a nice nook where to nap and claim it as your own. 

It was only when we were almost back on the road that we saw the mob of people gathered around one particular formation.

Skull rock, assuming the skull belonged to the Elephant Man

The Keys view overlook, gazing onto the Coachella Valley was much easier to find.  As this was also one of the few places to have a strong cell phone signal, there was a disconcerting number of people staring at their phones instead of taking in this remarkable view.

Our final stop of the day was Barker Dam, the sole site where water can be found and thus our best chance at seeing the bighorn sheep that inhabit the park. The sheep were MIA, possibly having donned their best boho outfits and wandered into the valley for the weekend's Coachella festival, but there was one rebellious lizard who stood proud.

By this point, it was getting late so we headed back towards the non-Canadian Ontario. While the first half of the "No, not that Manhattan/ Ontario" tour had sucked as much as anticipated, the second half had definitely made it up for it. 

As an aside, I recently started following comedian Paul Scheer's Instagram campaign, The Big 100. Every day, they announce a new action that people can take to do to counteract the reign of the Orange Idiot.  It just so happens that one of their recent suggestions was to visit and contribute to a national park. Honestly I can't think of a more enjoyable form of activism. Looking at it this way, not only did we escape Ontario, we were able to help a good cause while doing so.

#ProtectOurParks