Blame the four guys from Mount Temple who made a record 20 years ago. Since then the Joshua Tree has become famous as U2 and as iconic as the Golden Gate Bridge in Californian culture.
For a while it became a bit like the shamrock, an Irish emblem of the 80s. California has won it back at this stage, but it still hints at a national empathy with the deserts of southern California.
It is a two hour drive south from Los Angeles to the Joshua Tree's own national park, along a road where the hum is not of guitar chords but of windmills.
It is called the Ventura effect. Like everything in California it sounds like a movie title, it occurs when the desert floor heats up quicker than the air above the ocean. That creates a vacuum and air whistles through the pass between two big mountains.
The approaches to the desert are lined with wind turbines, 4,800 of them in all, powered by this windrush.
The sense of excitement grows with every mile. When you come from a land that is green and lush, deserts are extraordinarily attractive.
Out in the desert, the plant and animal life is among the most diverse in the world, second only to the rain forest.
Our Elite Land Tours guide shows us animals such as the Scots Oriole, which makes a hanging nest off the Joshua tree.
Each plant here has an interesting story to tell.
The creosote bush uses poison at its roots to kill off rivals and get all the water.
Long life is their speciality. One of the trees has been dated to 11,700 years old and is still alive today. When doctors learned that American Indians made tea from the trees to make them temporarily infertile for birth control, they became curious.
The New England Journal of Medicine has recently isolated the anti-oxidant of the creosote tree, and it is being used to develop a cure for skin cancer and possibly a cure for HIV.
The desert skies too are surprisingly full of life. The Morongo Valley water is pushed up to surface along Morongo fault, attracting 2,000 species of birds to the marsh area.
The vermillion fly catcher is the star of the show, a spectacular sight out in the desert against the stark landscape. Heat and dust are our constant companions.
As is a stop at a high end air conditioned spa at the end of the day.
Palm Springs desert is blooming with spas, entertainment and shopping. Over $1bn has been invested in upscaling the hotels south of Los Angeles.
Holiday brochures are inviting increasing numbers of us there, after much investment in high end resort spas.
The local CVBA markets eight communities in the Coachella valley of southern California, Palm Springs, Indian Wells, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Indio, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City and La Quinta.
The hotels are indeed impressive, adorned most spectacularly by nature itself, seen in the vista when you step out of the door of the air conditioned hotel.
The landscape here changes in the heat of the sun, as the mountains shuffle backwards and forwards to appear close in the morning and far away in the day-haze.
Here, the sense of place all relates back to the desert. But it is a desert alive with human activity.
Everything is just a few minutes drive away. The Coachella valley has 136 18-hole golf courses. Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert is a hidden gem in the middle of the city.
The Palm Springs tramway is the biggest man made attraction here, an experience unmatched anywhere in the world, or so they will convince you as you gather in the revolving tramcar before the ascent.
There are miles of hiking trails when you get to the top, and the sheer inaccessibility of it all without the benefit of the tram car is part of the wonder of the ride skywards.
Palm Springs has long had an allure for Hollywood stars. One of the tour packages through the area allows you to stay in Frank Sinatra's house.
One extraordinary show invites you to watch the oldest dance troupe in the world revisiting the 1940s spectaculars of Fred and Ginger. Most of the audience are of a similar age, retired people bussed in from gated communities in the hinterland.
Palm Springs follies claims the world's oldest chorus line. Mimi Hynes was the guest star when we called, a salute to the 1940s and a bizarre and over-cooked patriotic 'God Bless America' finale.
Master of ceremonies, Riff Markowitz, ad-libs his way hilariously through the show with an old fashioned panache.
One of the dancers, Dorothy Dale Kloss, is 83. Even Las Vegas wouldn't try that.
But then time passes slowly in the southern California desert. Those Joshua Trees are not going anywhere soon.
Aerlingus.com has low cost fares to Los Angeles in off peak periods, prices from €272 one way.
Major trans Atlantic tour operators all have packages to Palm Springs: www.americanholidays.ie, www.canamerica.ie, www.sunway.ie and www.touramerica.ie.
www.elitelandtours.com operates hummer tours through Joshua Tree National park. Tours include safari treks (where leopards jump on the hummer), a Siberian tiger sanctuary and a visit to the wolf sanctuary used in Dances With Wolves.
Tours cost $179 for a minimum of four people.
Joshua Tree Adventure is $149 for a four person tour, rates drop in summer, sometimes to $100 per person for families.
