Susan Spano wrote a piece for the LA Times last weekend about what happens when a trip doesn’t match up to expectations, or the realities of life on the road drag your fantasy vacation down to earth. While a few of her points might seem mundane to the more travel-seasoned among us, she raises some valid issues. Most trips won’t live up to the advertorial prose and glossy images that inspired them, and far less dramatic things than political uprisings or pandemics have the ability to send a vacation off the rails. Case in point: my recent trip to the SoCal desert. I’d planned to spend a week hiking and camping in Joshua Tree and the Mojave as an antidote to the last few grey, drippy weeks of NY winter. I congratulated myself, as I checked the forecasts in the weeks before I left, for picking the ideal time to go- sunny, 40˚ at night, 60-70˚ during the day, wildflowers blooming, no scorching summer heat – what could be better, right?

Right. This is what I woke up to after a first, very cold night camped out at Joshua Tree:



Snow. Several inches of snow, in the desert, 2.5 hours from Los Angeles, in mid-March.

I must admit, it was remarkably beautiful, but the flurries kept coming down and it was just too cold to stay – hardly the sun-and-sand spring break I’d been hoping for (or packed for). The next step was to figure out where to go, and calls to every park in the vicinty, almost as far south as the Mexican border, yielded the same answer – “cold, and snowing.” Death Valley, on the other hand, is an extra few hours to the north, but the hottest place on earth seemed like a pretty safe bet for vacation salvage at that point. So 7 hours and 35 degrees later, my co-pilot and I drove down below sea level, set up camp, and all was well.

We were lucky: we had no reservations or deposits holding us back, portable shelter, and a rental car with unlimited miles and a full tank of gas. The moral of the story? Even if you are a smartypants travel blogger and think you’ve planned your trip to perfection, always expect the unexpected, and never trust the Weather Channel.