Our poison of choice was a lot of great wine, scooped up at Nico’s in Los Angeles before we’d hopped on the highway, and we watched the moonrise that first night at Rancho Panoramo while sitting on the back deck with our glasses filled high (a bottle of No Es Pituko, a wine I often enjoy at home, awaited us from the hosts, adding to our bounty). From the front of the all-wood house, you can see some surrounding homes, but the backside—which is the one made of windows—faces the nearly virgin desert landscape, across which hummingbirds and little sparrows flit, and sunbathing lizards and curious chipmunks scurry. As the sky darkened, the jagged ridgeline of the mountains behind us grew sharp and pronounced.
Go-getters would have lit the fire under the wood-burning hot tub around that time, or maybe used the fabulous grill or wood-fired pizza oven for dinner; we, however, drove down the highway for steak salads at 29 Palms Inn, then returned to do more gazing out on the patio, appreciating the dead silence that would fall whenever we stopped gabbing long enough to sip our cool natural wine. “I’m getting a vision of a breakfast feast on the patio table,” my friend Emily said, gesturing at all the space upon which to spread berries, mangos, avocados, and juices. We all murmured in agreement.
The bedrooms felt like boltholes: cozy nooks and crannies to crash in once night fell. Once our luggage went in and got flung open, there wasn’t room for much else. The primary bedroom at the far end of the home was the obvious winner, with the sage linen-swathed bed built into a wooden platform and surrounded by more smooth wood paneling; there is also a perfect window at the foot of the bed that acts as a portal to the rest of the desert. The second and smaller bedroom has an elevated bunk bed of sorts; it would be ideal for children or, in our case, three additional adults who plan to spend the least amount of their time in the room as possible (we still weren’t quite sure where to put three open suitcases, though). For us, the bedrooms were less of a priority anyway—we wanted to enjoy the gorgeous communal areas together.