June 23 - Back from the desert & Two Bunch Palms, where temps hit 116 - hottest we've ever experienced. Know that feeling when you open the oven door on Thanksgiving to get a whiff of turkey? .. & that blast of hot air hits you in the face? That's how it was in the desert - without the turkey aroma.
Was so hot, the heat induced an altered state. Tried to understand the odd altered state - must have something to do with the intensity of the signals the brain receives from the body about its environment - extremely hostile & potentially life-threatening (would take long without water). Also, there's a deep, still quietness, or silence in the desert. If the wind's not blowing, nothing moves. Dead silence.
A plus of the high temps is that no bugs are out - no flies, no mosquitoes - nothing, & you can't blame 'em. But they come out with a vengeance soon as sun sets. A people-friendly roadrunner spent much of the day in the yard outside our room. He had no problem coming within reach of us. People didn't seem to concern him at all.
Stopped at Joshua Tree National Park before heading over to Two Bunch. Joshua Tree is downright mystical at summer desert temps. JT is great for rock-climbing & takes on a surreal, Dali-melting-clock-like atmosphere as the sun approaches the horizon & shadows grow exaggeratedly long in relation to the height of the (Joshua) tress & geometric-shaped rock formations.
After leaving Joshua Tree, we stopped at Jeremy's Cybercafe. It's such a neat place that we stop in every time we're in the area. Jeremy maintains the joshua-tree.com web site out of the cafe, which hosts half-dozen computers sharing a T1 line. Not only did he fix us a killer soup, salad & sandwich, but he also showed us how he hand-codes the site in HTML with NotePad. We can barely spell HTML.
Jeremy said he just sold the place to a guy from San Francisco, after ~10 years of biz, in order to pursue a career in writing. Hopefully it'll still be the killer place it is now when the new owner takes over, & we wish him well with his new career.