Annual Parade of Homes provides rare peek into stand-out desert dwellings

When it comes to houses, I’m a known looky-loo. I love to see what’s up, what’s down, and even sneak a peak when it’s appropriate. I’ll always stop for an open house, even though I’m not in the market, and I absolutely love Reach Out Morongo Basin’s annual Parade of Homes fundraiser. This is my opportunity to poke around in the interesting homes of exciting local figures. Z107.7’s own Gary Daigneault and Hilary Sloane have opened their homes in previous years, and this year’s line up features one home that’s hard to miss. Patrick Hasson’s Rainbow Land, visually popping on the north side of Twentynine Palms Highway in Joshua Tree. Hasson was a guest on the Z107.7 Up Close show, where he talked about his inspiration to transform a single-family home into Rainbow Land. 

Hasson said, “I’ve turned the house into a gallery of sorts, but it really has become an attraction. The home has an interesting history. When I first bought the house, I wasn’t aware that there had been a murder there a couple years earlier, which I learned about later on. But I immediately was like, ‘OK, I got to change the mojo.'”

All of the funds raised from this event will go toward Reach Out Morongo Basin. On that same episode of the Z107.7 Up Close Show, Reach Out Executive Director Robin Schlosser described all the work that her organization does. 

Schlosser said, Our primary purpose is to provide services for seniors and the disabled. We help with home workers, personal business assistants, we do chores and yard work, things like that. We had a big program where we were doing fall prevention and fall education, installing grab bars and wheelchair ramps and walk-in showers when we had funding from the county.

We run the Twentynine Palms Senior Center, so we set up for activities and oversee the operations. And then of course our biggest program is our transportation. We provide rides to local doctor’s appointments, we do grocery shopping, post office bank errands, and we do runs down the hill five days a week.”

Tickets are on sale now and are available at the California Welcome Center, Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce, Visit 29 and the Desert Trail, Reach Out Morongo Basin offices in Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms and at any home on the day of the tour!