The Southwest Triangle

The Southwest keeps three of America's most distinct city weekends within an afternoon of one another, the easygoing harbor city, the manicured old script, and the neon improbability in the desert, and running them as one triangle, coast road north, desert highway east, delivers a week of maximum contrast with minimal logistics. The route wants five or six nights, works in any season, and peaks in the fall, when the coast clears and the desert cools.

Start on the harbor per the city's pieces in these pages, two nights of the water-up version, coves in the morning, the famous park's museums by day, fish tacos without ceremony, and, in fall, the warm-water swims the Last Swim pages celebrate. Leave northbound on the coast road, not the interstate, which is the whole point of driving this corner of the country.

Take the middle nights in the old script, covered at length in these pages, the maintained hedges and the working uniforms, one dressed dinner or famous patio lunch, and the free evening stroll through the flats at golden hour. The town's unhurried theatrical calm makes the correct staging area before the desert, like a green room with topiary.

Finish across the Mojave, the drive itself a two-act play of Joshua trees and heat mirage, and take the city on your own terms per its piece in these pages, one great show, one serious dinner, one deliberate hour of the spectacle, and the sunrise hour when the whole apparatus stands briefly quiet. The triangle's three cities share a state line, a freeway system, and absolutely nothing else, which is the itinerary's entire argument and the West's standing joke, told at seventy miles an hour with the windows down.