Month: March 2005

After a nearly sleepless night in the otherwise lovely Pepper Tree Inn we were transferred to another room with better design, and happily stayed a second night.
During the day, we toured Palm Springs and the surrounding area; we first visited the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens, which was interesting but had some rather sad animals in disappointingly small cages. Nevertheless, the Zebra seemed happy, and Margaret enjoyed brushing goats in the petting zoo section:

In the early evening we headed over to Palm Canyon Oasis – the palm trees are amazing in their “wild” state where they appear to keep their old leaves; there was not much water visible at the oasis – but obviously enough to grow many palm trees!

Today we drove through Joshua Tree National Park in California – we expected a desert environment but found instead a shockingly lush wild flower scene, due to recent rains and spring growth!

Further along the drive, which leads up into higher elevations, the flowers faded out and we found “ocotillos“, spiky “trees” which had leaves and flowers during our visit but apparently drop their leaves for the harsher times of year:

The next plant phase was “chollas” which look a bit like prickly teddy bears; but I don’t think you would cuddle them!

And finally as we reached ever higher into the hills, we found Joshua trees; they were also in near flower, and their flower stalks look strangely like a cross between cauliflower & pineapple …

 

After leaving the Joshua trees, we headed back down the hills, passing a wind farm on the way and booking in to the lovely Pepper Tree Inn in Palm Springs:

The only problem (as we were to discover) is that the wall of our room was paper thin …