Vacation

Palm Springs is one of a number of towns nestled in a valley, one side has pretty high mountains – and there is a “tramway” (cable car) run to the top! To get to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway you first drive from the valley floor (at about sea level) to around 2500ft – quite a climb in itself! Even just the walk from parking to the entrance takes you a good way higher, but the tramway itself lifts you more than a mile vertically to about 8500ft!
I am not at all keen on heights or riding such flimsy transport, but we made it to the top in one piece and I must admit the view from the top is impressive!

There is a big temperature difference from the 80s in the valley to around 40, with snow still not melted away!

After returning to the ground, we headed further west towards San Diego, driving through & over the mountains, eventually staying overnight in Carlsbad, right opposite “the flower fields” (read about them here).

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 …