Day 6 ~ Pool Day

Our original plan for Friday was to check out the Indian Canyons park in Palm Springs.  Then, I overheard someone talking about the "Living Desert" in Rancho Mirage, which is a zoo, but also has a huge model railroad exhibit (which had Keith sold on the idea).  But Friday morning, Keith woke up feeling pretty crummy, so we decided to just stay put for the day.  I don't know if it was the stress of the past few months catching up with him, or the combination of the heat & air conditioning, but he wasn't up for much of anything.

Which was totally fine with me, I'm always happy to sit by the pool.  It actually turned out to be a great day for it, the temperature was a little lower, and the wind was stronger, so we were actually able to sit in the sun a little bit.  It was a nice, relaxing way to end the vacation.

As a general rule, I always consider our vacations too short, and I need just a few more days to relax.  But by Friday evening, we were both ready to come home.  It was nice to be warm for a few days, but a week of 107 degrees was about our limit, and we were both pretty eager to see our little guy again.

Day 5 ~ Happy Birthday Julie!

Thursday was my birthday!  In the morning, I went for a massage, while Keith went to the local driving range to hit a few golf balls.  He originally had an idea of playing 9-holes or so of golf, but we both realized that hitting a few balls off the driving range would probably be more than enough golfing for one day.

In the evening, we headed over to Palm Springs for their Thursday night Street Fair.

After the fair, we found a nice restaurant for dinner.

It's kind of funny, one of our favorite things to do when travelling is to try the local food: seafood in Hawaii, tacos in Mexico.  We quickly discovered that there isn't much of a "local food" movement when you're in the middle of the desert.  So, I got to try soft-shell crab, which is something you'd never find at home, and isn't remotely local to anywhere this side of the Mississippi river, but it was good!

Day 4 ~ Palm Springs Air Museum

Wednesday, we spent the morning lounging by the pool, then spent the afternoon at the Palm Springs Air Museum.

This stop was clearly more for Keith than for myself, but it was quite interesting.  They had two hangars full of airplanes used in Japan and Europe during the wars.  And, unlike most museums, you could walk right up to the airplanes, which are much bigger up close than you'd think.

Keith even took a tour of a B-10 bomber (I wasn't sure I'd fit through the hatch, so I stayed behind).  The museum seems to be mostly staffed with older, volunteer air-enthusiasts, so Keith's tour was guided by a man who seemed to know all there was to know about the bomber, and he had a very willing student in Keith.

On the way home, we stopped for Happy Hour at the Jackalope Ranch, in Indio, near our resort.  I didn't get any pictures, but it was a beautiful location, with rivers & waterfalls flowing through the back-yard patio area.

Day 3 ~ Joshua Tree National Park,

Tuesday morning, we headed to the Joshua Tree National Park.  It is an enormous park, the entrance to the park was about 45 miles from our resort, but it was another hour or so drive from the entrance to the parts that we wanted to see.

When you enter the park, you get a map with what is essentially a menu of all the hikes & camp grounds on the park.  We picked the two shortest hikes we could find and headed over.

The park is over 500,000 acres, and includes the Colorado & the Mojave deserts.  We found the Mojave desert to be much more interesting than the Colorado.  Fortunately, we started with the Colorado, so we didn't have to end our trip with an hour & a half of looking at not-super-interesting rocks.  "Hey look kids, more rocks!"

The first hike we did was a 1.3 mile "hike" (both hikes we did were pretty flat) to the Barker Dam.  It was built by ranchers to water their cows.

This area didn't seem especially hospitable to any sort of living creature, but especially not grazing cattle.

Keith, of course, found the dam rather fascinating.

On our way back from this hike, we ran into a couple with a little boy a little older than Parker.  We were again reminded of how glad we were that he was at home.  The mom was carrying the little guy, and dad was following with a toy lawn mower.  That just doesn't sound like fun for anyone.

Our 2nd hike was a one-mile loop to the "Hidden Valley", a prime hide-out for cattle rustlers.

Man, I look pregnant in this picture!

The weather was quite nice for the trip, but by the time we finished our 2nd "hike", I was exhausted, Keith was out of water, and the temperature was quickly exceeding 100-degrees.  Time to head back to the air conditioning.  We went back to Rancho Mirage for lunch and a movie.

I can't remember the last time I saw a matinee (especially on a Tuesday), but we saw two on this trip.  A movie seems like a tragic waste of daylight, but when it's 107 outside, an air-conditioned theater seems like a pretty good idea.

Day 2 ~ Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

Palm Springs has some enormous wind farms.  When you're driving past them from the airport at 1am, they look like something straight out of a science fiction novel with their turning rotors and blinking red lights.

But, they're pretty interesting to look at during the day too.  So interesting, in fact, that we drove right past our exit.

Nearly everyone we talked to about Palm Springs mentioned the Aerial Tramway, so we thought we'd check it out.

They also all said, "we didn't spend too much time up there, it was too cold", so we went up in the afternoon when the weather in the city is crazy hot.

The tram car actually spins inside, so you get a 360-degree view of the trip.

I have to admit that my fear of heights kicked in a bit while we were going up, so I probably didn't enjoy the ride as much as I should have, but it still was pretty cool.  You go through 5 different eco-systems on the 2.5 mile ride up the mountain. 

In the winter time, they actually have cross-country skiing and show shoeing at the top (while it's still in the high-80's in town).

It wasn't that cold when we went, closer to the mid-80's, so it was a nice change from the 107 at the resort.

You can see for miles from up top, although, all you can see is miles of desert, so it's up to you to decide if it's worth it.

We ended up spending a lot longer up top than we'd planned.  We just missed the 4:00 trolley down, and then the 5:00 trolley left about a half-hour late.  Turns out it was so hot out, they had to let the engine cool off before we could make the trip back down.  Seems crazy that they would be so un-accustomed to the heat that the engine could over-heat, but at least we were stranded at the top and not half-way down!

Palm Springs Vacation ~ Day 1

So...  I tried desperately to blog while we were on vacation, but downloading photos turned out to be just too much for our little tablet, so now I'm "virtually" going back in time to document our trip.

We flew out around 8:30 on Saturday evening.  It was strange leaving so late in the day, but it gave us a few extra hours to hang out with Parker.  It also meant that we checked into our hotel after 1:30 am on Sunday, so not too many photos of Saturday.

Sunday morning, we drove to Rancho Mirage to see a little street fair.  While we were at the street fair, we saw a booth selling something for "golf cars" and Keith commented on the "cars" rather than "carts".  I said that maybe golf carts are so common here they out-number the cars.  Less than an hour later, we saw this driving down the road:

Turns out, they really do use them as cars.  Later, we saw a 6-seater golf cart that seemed to be some sort of shuttle bus on their downtown shopping area.  Which kind of makes sense, I'd been wondering how anyone could do any serious shopping if you had to walk in that heat.

We spent the afternoon hanging out by the pool at our resort.  We also learned that my flip flops & wet concrete don't mix.  Baby Girl & I were fine, but I still have a rather impressive bruise on my knee and I destroyed my pedicure (guess 28 hours is about the expected life-span of a pedicure these days).

The resort we stayed at is beautiful!  And I don't think I've ever been to such a family-friendly place.  The "fully stocked" kitchens were actually fully-stocked enough that you could cook a meal in them, and they had a spray park, in addition to two kiddie pools and two playgrounds.  Seeing all the little ones made us pretty homesick for our little guy, but more than anything, we were relieved to not have him with us.  The heat was intense, and it seemed like it would have been fairly miserable for Parker.

Meanwhile, while we were in the heat...Parker met his cousins at the park for Mother's Day:

Yes, Mother's Day.  Turns out I'm a horrible mother who shipped her kid off to Grandma's house and skipped town for Mother's day.  But I don't think he or Grandma were complaining.

When we were walking around town, I thought it was funny how many people told me "Happy Mother's Day!" since my kiddo wasn't with me.  It took me a while to realize that they were really referring to my giant baby belly.