The Joshua Tree, a strange and beautiful plant so big it resembles a tree, is a fine thing in its own right. But dotting the landscape of California’s Pioneertown, these famous 700-year-old plants play merely a bit role in the strangeness around them.

Pioneertown – 130 miles east of Hollywood – is semi-real. That is, a chunk of its main street was built as a facade in 1946 for Westerns that featured Gene Autry and Duncan Renaldo. The rest of the town functions as a real town would. There’s a real post office of the sort that Gary Cooper might have walked into in “High Noon,” and a real corral named Betty B’s. But other parts of the town are simply illusions.

Pioneertown’s famous locals are an incongruous bunch. There is Johnette Napolitano, the former lead singer of Concrete Blonde, and the late bluesman, Buzz Gamble, famous for spending time in most of the jails of Texas and California and for being the inspiration of Johnny Paycheck’s song “The Great Donut Robbery.” Apparently, Gamble did some time for stealing 169 donuts in Salinas.

While the town’s main drag can be traversed in only a few minutes, visitors are often slowed down a bit trying to discern the real from the unreal. A general feeling of ambivalence lingers. A “saloon” has swinging doors that lead to nowhere. A lawyer’s office has a perennial “Gone Fishing” sign slung crooked on its porch. But a few doors down, on a private resident’s lawn, is an eclectic sculpture made of everything from plastic dinosaurs to Chinese figurines. The “real” within the town is often indicated by a hand-carved sign reading “private residence,” posted in case some unlucky sightseer stumbles into a room looking for a gunsmith or a bartender.

Driving down the two-lane Highway 62, passing “dig your own cactus” nurseries and musty biker bars, the road to Pioneertown is found in the city of Yucca Valley, a funky, straight-shooting, high-desert hamlet of authentic antique shops offering curios like fading Coca-Cola signs and Buffalo Bill ashtrays. From here, the road to Pioneertown winds five miles or so through rolling coffee-colored hills and the occasional thump of a jackrabbit.

On a recent weekend, my friend Ming and I pulled into the bumpy dirt road of the Pioneertown Motel (5040 Curtis Road, 760-365-4879, www.pioneertownmotel.com; $55-$65 a night), knocked on the door of the “office,” and found ourselves stepping into a kitchen with a woman washing dishes. “Any rooms?” I asked. “Nope. We got a wedding this weekend … but the bar’s open at the Pioneer Bowl.” Looking us over and finding us irrepressibly urban, she added, “Or they got some lattes back in Yucca Valley.”

While we walked the town’s central dirt road trying to make sense of the real and the unreal, a flock of doves rushed into the air, swarming the corners of the desert sky with their coos. Below them, a bride and groom were enthusiastically kissing against a dusty breeze that blew the straw hats off the groomsmen. Applause followed as we passed through a critical mass of invitees. At the end of the road a red flag snapped, a requirement by California law to show the town is saddled with high levels of arsenic in its water.

We peeked into one interesting building only to find that it was empty except for a damaged piano. Next, we approached a small red church with a hand-carved sign mounted on its door exclaiming “Howdy Friends.” While we flirted with going in, a group of urban mountain bikers in nylon pants exited cheerfully. With the surrealism mounting, we decided to just head back to the car, find a motel nearby, and return later for the live music at the town’s notable venue, Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace (53688 Pioneertown Road, 760-365-5956, www.pappyandharriets.com).

On our way back, we couldn’t resist a visit to the Pioneer Bowl (53613 Mane St., 760-365-3615 www.pioneertown.com/bowl) for a cocktail.

Inside, four empty bowling lanes waited patiently for some bowlers To the left, wine-colored pool tables and a modest bar flanked a group of gunfighters gathered around a table laughing heartily and sipping sangria while their six-shots rested tabletop. They had just finished a reenactment show and were laughing about the “Lone Ranger,” which was blaring from the bar’s black-and-white TV. Cowboys drinking sangria? Well, this is California.

As Ming and I sat at the bar, a local came up and ordered from the bartender, a sturdy woman in an indigo period dress slicing oranges for the homemade sangria. “You want some sangria, Pat?” she asked. “It’s free for locals today.”

Knowing we were within earshot, Ming and I looked at each other wondering if that was a tacit clue we weren’t welcome. Behind the bar was a sign: “There are two things we don’t tolerate in Pioneertown: Stealing our women and not paying your bill.” We sat silently and somewhat paralyzed until the local glanced over and said, “Boy, you two sure are awfully quiet.”

“It’s our first time,” I said. “First time at what?” she rejoined, then giggled and downed the rest of her wine. “Sandy, make them one of those strawberry margaritas.”

The bartender happily started paring strawberries by hand and throwing them into a blender. After a whirl, she poured Big Gulp-sized portions for both Ming and me.

It was simply a gorgeous margarita. The icy strawberry pulp crunched on the palate but didn’t mask the smooth tequila. With our bartender generously topping us off, we soon got drunk.

A man popped into the bar and said, “Dale, go get your guns, the bride wants to take a picture with us.”

The bartender and Pat chatted about how the groom was found naked and prancing in front of the bride’s room the night before. “That’s Pioneertown for you,” said Pat.

Soon, one of the gunfighters sat near us and began explaining the nature of the re-enactments. “We write the skits ourselves. Sometimes they change. But basically I get shot every time.”

On that note, Ming and I decided it was time to go rest up for our night at Pappy’s.

With such renowned artists as Lucinda Williams and Shelby Lynne passing through, Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace is no small-town honky-tonk. And yet, the look and feel of the place, with its high beamed ceilings and shabby murals, feels like a mere road stop where someone like Randall “Tex” Cobb might be the bouncer.

That night, the band was a group of local boys playing cover tunes. Try playing “Sweet Home Alabama” at the Knitting Factory and see if people start dancing. At Pappy’s, 60-something grannies bum-rushed the dance floor, husbands and boyfriends started hooting, and much beer was spilled in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s honor.

Sampling the menu, I ordered a tasty catfish with broccoli and some peppery mashed potatoes, and a pitcher of sangria, figuring that if the cowboys can drink the stuff, it’s safe for a metrosexual like me. Either way, as the night wore on and the dance floor hopped, I could say without a doubt that the sangria, like the joint itself, was the real deal.