Our desert is perfect for experiencing the wonders of nature, and the expansiveness of the high desert in particular is a stargazer’s dream.
Every year, the Perseid meteor shower lights up the sky, with 50 to 100 seen per hour—and this year, Twentynine Palms is celebrating the annual event with a six-day gathering focused on … extraterrestrials?
Yep! Area 29: Galactic Gathering is a UFO and skywatching festival taking place from Thursday, Aug. 8, through Tuesday, Aug. 13. The gathering will include a number of alien-themed events like art shows, film screenings, cosmic bowling, pool parties, yoga and more, with stargazing events taking place on the peak meteor shower nights of Monday, Aug. 12, and Tuesday, Aug. 13.
During a recent interview with Sara Lyons, the organizer of Area 29, she explained how the event came together.
“Area 29 is a community-wide, big umbrella festival that is primarily being organized by Rediscover 29, which is our local business association,” said Lyons. “We noticed that last year in Twentynine Palms, due to the Perseid meteor shower falling on a weekend, we had a huge influx of visitors to our community during a time of year when normally no one comes—and the town was kind of unprepared for it. The tourists didn’t really have anything to do besides come and try and find a place to look at the stars. Also, in August in Twentynine Palms, there’s not a lot of things for locals to do, because people aren’t planning things during the hot weather, so we wanted to combine the excitement of the annual Perseid meteor shower and the potential to have people visiting our community, but also give our community members something to do during this really slow season.”
The wide-open areas of the high desert have a long history of purported UFO sightings and extraterrestrial stories. Just last year, headlines were made regarding a potential UFO sighting above the marine base.
“We decided, if we’re all going to be looking at the sky anyway, looking for meteors, then why not also have some fun and capitalize on the rich history of UFO and alien-watching here in the high desert?” Lyons said.
Area 29 is also a celebration of the businesses in the Twentynine Palms area, and the creative and entertaining individuals who run them.
“We really have been calling in all of our local businesses and our local community members, artists and creators and entrepreneurs, and anyone really who wants to be involved,” Lyons said. “We are inspired by bigger alien festivals, but ours is definitely a little bit more fun and a little sillier. We have some really cool programming, like film screenings and speakers and presentations, but we also have fun and silly stuff—like we have pole dancers who are going to be dressed like aliens, and we’ve got a pool party where we’re going to be floating on alien floats. We’re going to have a bunch of art workshops and activities, and a mobile tattoo bus that will be popping up at various locations in town throughout the weekend. We also have a scavenger hunt that we’ll be running for the entire weekend that will entice people to visit all of our local businesses. We’re really just trying to have as much fun as we can, and throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. We hope that this will be a fun flagship event that will grow, and we can do it every year.”
While the attendance of guests from outer space has yet to be determined, Lyons confirmed that some guests will be visiting from outside of the desert.
“Part of the festival is about creating messaging around the meteor shower so that people … can experience it in the best way, without being intrusive to our community or to the National Park, because that was an issue last year.”
Area 29 organizer Sara Lyons
“We are bringing in Brad Abrahams, who’s a director based in Texas, and he is going to be coming out to show his 2017 documentary, Love & Saucers,” Lyons said. “It’s about a man who believes that he has been having very romantic relationships with aliens for his entire life. We also have actor and writer Mike Caravella, who is going to be doing a sneak preview of his sci-fi Western comedy, which is called Astral Plane Drifter, which was shot out in this area. We do have Leslie and (Stephen) Shaw, who are from the low desert, and they’re going to be coming up to speak about their abduction experiences, and then we have Chris Campion, the journalist, who is part-time-Morongo Basin-based, and he will be speaking about Saturation 70, the lost Gram Parsons movie that was shot partially at the UFO festival in 1969 in Landers.”
A majority of the Galactic Gathering events will be free to attend, while a few will require tickets.
“The presentations with our speakers and our authors taking place on Saturday, those presentations will be free,” Lyons said. “The scavenger hunt will be free to participate in. There will be all kinds of art activations and things that are free to participate in, and then some of the art workshops are ticketed. The screenings will be ticketed, and our 21-plus pool party will be ticketed. The majority of the events are going to be either free or very low-cost.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without music!
“We’ll be hosting alien-themed karaoke, taking place at Out There Bar, and Out There Bar is going to be hosting after-parties every night,” Lyons said. “Bowladium and the Back Alley Lounge will also be hosting a couple of after-parties. We have a galactic sound bath scheduled, and we’re still kind of figuring out a little bit of other programming, so we may have more entertainment in the late evenings.”
During last year’s Perseid meteor shower, some folks complained about crowded streets and jammed roadways entering and exiting the desert. Lyons said she and her team have put measures in place to elevate the experience for this year’s shower.
“Part of the festival is about creating messaging around the meteor shower so that people who are visiting, and also people who are local, can experience it in the best way, without being intrusive to our community or to the National Park, because that was an issue last year,” she said. “We have been working with Joshua Tree National Park on messaging that we will be pushing. We’re going to be providing some locations where people can go and look at the meteor showers without having to pull over on the side of the road, which was an issue last year. The 29 Palms Inn, our local historic hotel property, has kindly offered on Monday and Tuesday nights, which will be the peak nights for viewing of the meteor showers, to provide their space for people to come and hang around and look up at the sky in a relatively low light environment … and it’s not going to be intrusive to or destructive to the National Park.”
Lyons pointed out that last year’s peak meteor-shower nights fell on a weekend, during a new moon, making for particularly excellent viewing.
“This year, it will be falling on a Monday and Tuesday, which is also the first day of school for a lot of folks in the community,” she said “The National Park has wanted to advise people to manage their expectations on viewing this year, because it won’t be as spectacular as last year, but just because last year was such a zeitgeisty event, we just expect that people are going to want to come either way. We want to be able to provide people with some opportunities to hopefully see some stars and also just have fun.”
Area 29: Galactic Gathering will run from Thursday, Aug. 8, through Tuesday, Aug. 13, at multiple locations in Twentynine Palms. For tickets, an updated schedule and more information, visit rediscover29.com.
