Palm Desert & Palm Springs
(updated Mon. Feb 8, 2016)
In 1999 & 2000, I was fortunate to have been staffed
on a project in San Diego, flying to/from each week.
While there, a co-worker suggested that I propose to
Ann Marie in Palm Springs, where we had not been
before. We visited, and rode the Palm Springs
Aerial Tram to the top of Mt. San Jacinto.
I proposed, and she accepted!
We have visited many times since then. We have come
to love the dry desert, and are constantly amazed by its
beauty in the spring, especially in Joshua Tree National
Park (JOTR / http://www.nps.gov/jotr/index.htm and http://www.stltoday.com/travel/stark-beautiful-empty-cactus-studded-joshua-tree-national-park-remains/article_4787d61f-a034-5388-80e4-e343140a6231.html).
We have an entire page just for Joshua Tree:
http://vanvooren.us/VV/Joshua_Tree_NP.html
More on Mt. San Jacinto, and Saint Hyacinth, who is the Polish saint for whom the Spanish named the mountain:
The four of us love the family time together. The kids love visiting The Living Desert, which is part desert zoo and part desert arboretum.
They have an incredible variety of plants and animals, only some of which are seen in these photos:
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-falcons
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-bighorn sheep (rams)
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-Grevy’s Zebra
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-cheetahs
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-fennec foxes (largest ears, by ratio, of all canines... the one on the right only sat up for two seconds, just long enough for these photos!)
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-African wild dogs (similarly, this one only stood up long enough to turn around and lay back down!)
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-long-horn Ankole cattle (the only animals whose horns radiate heat away from the body)
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-and a desert oryx, missing one of its two horns, making it a legitimate unicorn!
We also fed the giraffes!
And at the hotel we learned that “black ducks with white bills” actually are not ducks, but are American Coots, as described in this article - http://djringer.com/birding/2010/11/14/whats-that-small-black-duck-with-a-white-bill/:
“Reflections in a Chevrolet Woody”
On a couple trips we have taken guided bike trips, which have given us a chance to see the desert up close. We have seen the earth tilted up atop the San Andreas Fault, and have seen the crops stretch to the horizon (fed by underground water... one of the world’s largest aquifers).
The Palm Springs Air Museum has an impressive collection of airplanes.
When we go, we try to visit a beach city before or after. The drives between the two, especially when we take the mountain routes, are especially beautiful.
Palm Springs and Palm Desert are two neighboring cities, and are two of seven or eight in in the Coachella Valley. This is a map from you can see at The Living Desert.
In 2015 we took the kids to the top of Mt. San Jacinto for their first time, riding the Palm Springs Aerial Tram. It was great to visit the beautiful alpine scenery high above the desert floor. The Tram is a “10 minute ride at the Valley Station - elevation 2,634 feet, and end at the Mountain station - elevation 8.516 feet.”
Views from the tram ride up:
Views along the Discovery Trail:
from where we were engaged, looking back down on Palm Desert:
Right around the corner is this weathering old fallen tree, which does not look much different than won that day we were engaged 16+ years ago...
We saw some amazing clouds on our 2015 trip, including...
... these cirrus clouds, which are composed of ice crystals from freezing water droplets:
... and these lenticular / mountain clouds, “which form high above a mountain when a stream of high-level moist air rises as it flows over a summit. If there are several layers of moist air, piles of lenticular clouds are formed looking uncannily like ‘flying saucers.’”
(“An Instant Guide to Weather,” 1999; Eleanor Lawrence and Borin Van Loon; p. 58)
Over the years we have taken some beautiful night photos and astrophotos while visiting Palm Desert. Photos like this, and others, see our Photography page:
http://vanvooren.us/Photography/Astro_Photography.html
And these are some of our photos from previous visits:
Two sunrises, Nov., 2015.
