Pool open till midnight
Our favourite way to the park: a date shake, a thrift stop and one very long straight road. Leave at five, back for tacos.
Leave before sunrise. Grab a date shake at the stand nine miles north, then take the old highway instead of the interstate.
It’s about an hour from the motel to the park’s west entrance if you go straight there, but nobody should go straight there. This is the version of the drive we give guests who ask at the front desk, scribbled on the back of a map so many times that we finally wrote it down properly.
Before you go
Fill up in town. Fuel gets scarce and expensive the closer you get to the park.
Bring a gallon of water per person, more in summer. The front desk will fill bottles for free.
Download your maps. Signal drops out past the second ridge and doesn’t really come back.
Pack layers. It can be cold enough for a jacket at dawn and over ninety by lunch.
Where to stop
The thrift mile in town opens at ten. The park entrance is quiet before eight. Bring more water than you think, then a bit more.
That leaves you a choice: park first and thrift on the way back, or the other way round. We always say park first. The light is better, the trails are empty and it’s cool enough to enjoy the walk. By the time you’re done, the shops are open and you’ve earned a slow browse through racks of western shirts and boxes of old postcards.
The date shake
The stand nine miles north has been there longer than the motel. It’s a tin roof, a counter and a hand-painted sign, and the shake is exactly what it sounds like: dates, milk and ice cream, blended until it’s too thick for the straw. Order a small. The small is not small.
Inside the park
If you only have a morning, take the short loop trails near the west entrance, where the boulders are stacked like someone abandoned a game halfway through. Climb a little, sit a lot, and watch the light move across the rocks. If you have the whole day, keep driving south towards the cholla garden, but go slowly. The road is long, the tortoises have right of way, and nobody has ever regretted pulling over to look.
Getting back
Head home by mid-afternoon, before the heat peaks and the glare on the long straight road gets tiring. Stop at the overlook on the way down the hill for one last look across the valley. You should be back at the motel in time for a swim and, on a Sunday, tacos in the courtyard.
Tell us how it went. We keep a notebook of guest tips at the front desk, and the best ones end up on this map.