Weekend Escape: Yucca Valley : Far Out Valley : Need a Different Reality? Book a Room at the Oasis of Eden, Visit the Integratron, and Join Those Boulder-Climbers in the Desert

Ah, Paris in spring, where Sundays in the park are pointillistic and the train stations impressionistic . . . But that’s if you have lots of time and money.

Otherwise, springtime in surrealistic Yucca Valley’s the place I want to be! Where the nearby rock formations could have been conceived by painter Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali’s melting watches wouldn’t look out of place.

My wife and I are climbers, and hence frequent visitors to Joshua Tree National Monument, a climbing mecca. Our first trip there together we stayed at the Oasis of Eden, minutes away in Yucca Valley. It was cheap, the idea of a hot shower after climbing sounded heavenly, and anything with a name like that just had to be interesting. We had fond memories.

In the two years since that first visit we’d grown to love camping in the monument, however, and had never torn ourselves away long enough to explore the town of Yucca Valley and environs. We set aside a weekend in early March to do just that.

The experience proved as surreal as the landscape.

Calling for reservations at the Oasis of Eden, we had a choice of theme suites including the Persian, where we’d stayed the last time, or others with in-room spas such as the Bermuda Triangle, so called because “when people go in, they don’t come out,” and the Esther Williams.

We booked the Safari Suite. With that in mind, I figured we’d make like we were being squired by deluxe outfitters Abercrombie & Kent. So before picking up my wife on the way out of town, I stopped for a few gourmet dinner items at the heralded Pascal Epicerie in Newport Beach.

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We headed east, took a David Lynchian left turn between not-so-twin peaks San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, the two highest in Southern California, and continued past an army of windmills that would have given Don Quixote pause.

A mural on the motel’s parking-lot wall depicted Joshua trees and snowcapped peaks. It’s been noted that unlike travelers, tourists seek the exotic nearby and the familiar far away. Local tourists, then, should be cheered by another mural, poolside, of a beach scene; reality blurs when the mural’s painted rocks and driftwood merge with real ones placed purposefully on the pool deck.

The Safari Suite featured a canopied bamboo bed and wallpaper with three species of gazelle. A porcelain zebra head and a large oil portrait of a zebra family hung on adjacent walls.

Our first night we enjoyed our in-room picnic: a three-course meal of gravlax (herbed raw salmon); rabbit rillettes and lamb terrine; gratte de paille, the richest cheese we’d ever had, and bleu de papillon, the most intense, while watching what appeared to be live ongoing local coverage of the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps going through its paces.

Complimentary bagels and cream cheese are served at the front desk, but Saturday morning we headed across town to the House of Happiness, a Chinese restaurant serving American breakfast where smells of incense and cooking bacon mingle, and coffee is served in periwinkle plastic mugs.

“SWAP MEET OPEN, Y’ALL COME,” said the sign at the Sky Drive-In Theater, and after breakfast we complied. Inside we found eight-track tapes and buzz saw attachments, and picked up a pair of much-needed bungee cords. Best of all for bargain-hunters, one vendor announced, “Everything free, you heard right, donations to help pay for the space appreciated.”

We drove east past the Institute of Mentalphysics to Raven’s Used Books (at the Indian Cove turn off), where former tattoo artist Cliff Raven Ingram arranges his store by “the screwy decimal system.” Safaris perhaps still on our minds, we picked up seven titles including “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “King Solomon’s Mines.” We spent an hour; we could have spent four.

Rather than take the straight shot back to Yucca Valley, we looped through the monument, munching a store-bought barbecued chicken en route. The Joshua trees seemed about to become ambulatory, like Mickey Mouse’s mops in “Fantasia,” and a coyote--normally wary creatures--approached us at Skull Rock. We decided a nap was in order, and returned to our room.

The sole entry in our AAA TourBook under Yucca Valley was the Antone Martin Memorial, and upon awakening that’s where we headed. Dotting a hillside were sculptor Martin’s larger-than-life depictions of scenes from the life of Jesus, in white cement.

In nearby Landers, tours of the privately-owned Integratron, a mysterious 38-foot-high, 50-foot-diameter dome are offered the third and fourth weekends of each month, but caretaker Jack Brockway agreed to show us around anyway. Admission is $5. He also accompanied us to nearby Giant Rock, claimed to be the largest free-standing boulder in the world, beneath which, in a huge cavity, once lived the Integratron’s builder.

George Van Tassel, a former test pilot for billionaire eccentric Howard Hughes, spent 18 years constructing the wooden dome--with dowels and no nails--according to instructions he said he received via UFO contacts. He intended it to be a rejuvenation machine, a fountain of youth, but he died--mysteriously of course--before completing the project.

Caretaker Brockway, who also has a wrecking yard in Adelanto, positioned me before a multiwave oscillator in the dome’s rejuvenating “yellow” zone. The wave bombardment did seem to impart a subtle sense of well-being. It also erased my taped notes from the trip. And since I definitely entered the Twilight Zone during the 10-minute session, it’s altogether possible we were kidnaped by Venusians.

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We found ourselves standing before the Grubstake Inn, also in Landers, at dinnertime. On the front porch were an old stove, a family of ceramic howling dogs and airplanes made from beer cans. Among hundreds of knickknacks on the walls inside were jackalopes and an “Eat lotsa possum” license plate. On our table were little glass cars, an old wooden telephone and an amber pipe that turned out to be an Avon cologne bottle.

Oh, and what may be the best liver and onions in the world--$6.95 including soup or salad, choice of potato, vegetable, homemade biscuits and dessert. I generally shy from fried foods, but the fried potatoes and onions were out of this world, the fried catfish firm and crisp. Lisa and Roger Stockman’s restaurant was virtually at the epicenter of the Landers quake; rebuilding took four months.

Roger shared a “top secret” way back to Yucca Valley via Pioneertown, and it proved to be one of those backcountry lanes undiluted by artificial light. We pulled off to the side and drank in the stars, a milky canvas with pinpoints of dark, a night sky in negative. At Pioneertown, we passed on the St. Patrick’s Mexican Fiesta at Pioneer Bowl, and listened instead to the country band next door at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace.

Sunday was set aside for a relaxing day in the monument. We were too early for wildflowers, and my Integratron session had obviously had planetary consequences, for the wind picked up with an incredible fury. We chose routes of only moderate difficulty, that under the circumstances proved anything but moderate.

Those who don’t climb can enjoy any of a dozen ranger-guided walks. Or watch those who do climb: It’s a perfect way to be entertained during a picnic. On a beautiful day, the number of skilled climbers on formations near Hidden Valley Campground can make the sport a mesmerizing ballet over stone.

We made one stop on our way home, at the Wheel Inn in Cabazon, off Interstate 10, where a brontosaurus provides shelter for live peacocks and $10 buys a five-minute helicopter ride over the desert. We were seated at a booth beneath a landscape painting of lakeside cactus and dozens of headless ducks, and ordered banana cream pie, which revived us beyond all earthly imagining.

Budget for Two

Gas from Costa Mesa: $14.28 Oasis of Eden, two nights: 170.66 In-room gourmet picnic: 40.69 Breakfast, House of Happiness: 6.20 Entry to Joshua Tree Monument: 5.00 Barbecue chicken picnic: 3.84 Admission, Integratron: 10.00 Dinner, Grubstake Inn: 16.05 Coffee drink, Pioneertown Palace: 3.00 Breakfast, Country Kitchen: 8.30 Sandwiches, Kim’s Drive Through: 7.00 Pie at Wheel Inn: 4.72 FINAL TAB: $289.74

Oasis of Eden, 56377 Twentynine Palms Highway, Yucca Valley; telephone (619) 365-6321.