The 29 Palms Inn in Twentynine Palms is a favorite of many of us on this forum. The Inn shares a border with the Joshua Tree national park and many guests undertake small walks and then return to their rooms.
Joshua Tree itself is pretty fascinating -- here is a guide book I highly recommend and the photos are great too!
Twentynine Palms is a funny little town -- it's long had a hard edge -- it is near a famous US Marine training base with all of the side effects of such a placement. But it also has an extraordinary collection of murals -- several of the murals we've documented can be found in Twentynine Palms. This one is always fun to see in person.
Mark