Hicksville Trailer Palace

Somewhere in an unspecified location in the Mojave desert is a secret "motel" of sorts called Hicksville Trailer Palace and Artist Retreat. Jimmy convinced us to stay there. Based on pictures we had seen Maree and i had our reservations. After all, who wants to go sleep in a trailer in the desert as part of their vacation?

We wanted to do something outside LA in the desert while we were in California. We finally settled on Joshua Tree National Park, since Maree and i had never been there. We stayed at Hicksville for the night, in a nearby town.

Joshua Tree National Park at Dusk. I have no idea where we were. The sun was going down so we just pulled over on a side road and headed out into it on foot.

Jimmy is pointing at the way, or something.

Unfortunately we got there a little too late and we weren't able to see much of the park. We spent an hour first exploring, then hiking quickly to get up to what we thought was a broad overlook before the sun set. We came back slowly in the dark. So we went back to Hicksville. Hicksville looks a lot better in the dark.

It's actually a pretty cool place with each trailer following a theme. There are social games to play like shooting arrows, horseshoes, ping pong, etc.. It has a small pool. It even has a surprisingly good selection of music to play out in the rec areas.

This one is "The Sweet". It looked the best on the outside in a full moon.

The pool (which had a broken light when we were there) and "The Fifi" in the background.

We met some new friends who were staying in The Fifi. It was just them and us so we had a fire and relaxed all night. Here a blurry Paul Benson puts some fluid on the fire while a blurry Jeff Rasul makes a music selection in the background.

The weirdest one to me was this covered trailer with a horse and a corral. It's called "The Pony" and they say it's in the shade because it has no air conditioning. But it's cheaper.

Maree and i stayed in "The Sideshow". It's an actual train caboose modelled to look like a circus sideshow tent on the inside. It even came with the DVD set of cool old HBO series "Carnival". We didn''t have time to watch it though. Since it was an actual (old) train car it would rock around a lot when you walked around. I would have liked to taken it on the rails and slumbered away during a rainy night.

This was our bedroom at top and above is what it looked like when you were laying in bed. Pretty fun. Yes, that's a talking Zultan box in the corner.

Our caboose was large compared to the other trailers. It had a full kitchen and dining table.

The strange door to the bathroom.

The strange bathroom. The pipework for the shower totally sucked and was nearly impossible to get it running on any temperature other than scalding or freezing. The fish tank toilet tank was pretty cool. I wish there were fish in it.

Jimmy slept here, in the Integra Trailer. It was really small but had great air conditioning as a result. If the air conditioning broke you would probably die. I think in this picture our new friend Jeff is watching Jimmy try to figure out how to work the "alien communication system" pictured below.

Jeff and Paul stayed in "The Fifi", the one from the earlier pool picture. The interior was one of the most bizarre designs, with three floating heads above the bed that could be lit up to glow at night.