Planning a Family Thanksgiving in Wonder Valley

Every family has a version of the same conversation in October: whose house is Thanksgiving at this year, who's cooking, who's sleeping where. One way around all of it is to stop hosting it in a house at all — and use a getaway instead.

Wanderlust is set up for exactly this. Three bedrooms sleep the kind of mixed group Thanksgiving usually involves — grandparents, siblings, kids of different ages — without anyone on an air mattress in the living room. The kitchen and dining area is a real, full kitchen, not a kitchenette, which matters a lot on the one day of the year when the meal is the whole point.

The desert version of Thanksgiving looks a little different from the usual one. Mornings start slow, with coffee and a walk around the property instead of a rush to start the turkey at 7 a.m. Afternoons are open for a hike in Joshua Tree National Park, just minutes away, or a slower drive out to somewhere like the Glass Outhouse Art Gallery or Giant Rock — the kind of low-key, only-in-the-Mojave stops that give a family trip its own story instead of just a repeat of last year's dinner.

By the time the meal itself happens, everyone has actually spent the day together instead of just occupying the same kitchen. And after dinner, dessert doesn't have to mean everyone collapsing in front of a TV — five private acres and a fire pit make for a pretty good setting to sit outside, let the meal settle, and watch the sky do something a dining room never could.

It won't look like a traditional Thanksgiving. For a lot of families, that's exactly the appeal.