Nov. 28th: Enjoying Palm Desert Part 2

 

Karen and Craig sent some additional pictures of our first day hike in Palm Canyon. The pictures are very good so I added them in this blog even though I already covered the first day in the last blog.

The road into the canyon went through this fun opening. The vehicle is the Rahn's Flex.

Palm Canyon Stream & cattails

As we were hiking along the bottom of the canyon we reached the small stream flowing down from the mountains. Of course this time of year it was more like trickling. This stream is what allows the huge palms to thrive. If you look closely, you'll see there are even cattails growing. Amazing, given we were on the edge of the desert! It was significantly hotter when we were out from the shade of the palms. It was wonderful how much the palms kept it cool.

Fortunately for me, the Rahns have a time share in the Villas and invited me for a couple nights. They have had it for I think 17 years, so they saw a lot of growth after getting in on the ground floor. 

Once the sun was almost down it cooled off nicely. The fun continued with a walking tour of the Marriott Resort Hotel grounds. People in the time shares have access to all of the resort amenities. I had no idea how huge this place is. We stayed in building Q (Floor plan left) which has six individual units in it. There are 25 of those buildings each housing 4 to 6 units. So that's around 150 units. Then there are about the same number in the salmon colored buildings which were built later.

View from the balcony

Here is a link that shows pictures of one of the Villas we stayed in. It is very nice with a full kitchen, large living space and two bedroom/two baths, each with its own tub and separate walk in shower, and a very nice balcony overlooking the golf course and mountains. 

 Pics of Villas

The hotel is enormous, 777 rooms and a huge open atrium lobby. As you can imagine, stores, restaurants, bars, etc. Note the little boat in the picture. You can see more pictures at this site. 

Marriott Resort Hotel Pics 

The Rahn's surprised me with a boat ride! It turned out that the little boat in the picture above is available for a boat ride through the small waterway around the hotel. 

They said they knew I was suffering withdrawal from my boat so thought this would help. I never expected to go for a boat ride in the desert! It was a lot of fun.

Black Swan

On our cruise we spotted several black swans. They are permanent residents, why not, what a great place to hang out. 

Nesting black swan

One swan was on her nest in protected fencing. We're told she has six eggs and there is a naturalist on the staff that looks out for all the wildlife. (Wildlife relatively speaking.) 

We ate dinner at a seafood restaurant overlooking the grounds. It was not fancy, comfortable and the food was very good.

Green heron

We also saw some coots, ducks and a green heron. The green heron wouldn't stretch out its neck but at least I got this picture. I really enjoy green herons because they have a very long neck with green coloration on it. But when resting the neck shrinks down a great deal.  I included this link so you can see how it looks with the neck extended. Green Heron Neck Extended

Picture of the canyon below
from about 1/3 of the way up

The next day we went for a Palm Springs cable Tram ride. The cable car is an engineering marvel. Craig and I were able to get some good pictures. Given that the ride up is 2 and 1/2 miles, We could barely see the building at the bottom from the top.

Tram car coming down

We were able to watch a tram car coming down in the distance as we were going up. It looked very tiny.

View close to the top

We could barely see the building at the bottom from the summit.

The tram cars are larger than they look in the pictures. They hold a maximum of 80 people but fortunately they only filled them to 50 people. The tram car floor rotated so everyone gets a 360 degree view on the way up and down. The cars also swing, not a great ride for someone afraid of heights!

The Counterweights and cable system used to drive the tram cars are visible through a window at the top along with some information as to how it works. Relatively simple actually!

Here is a link that provides a lot of the history of the Tram Palm Springs Tram history

When we made it to the summit we started our planned hike. Karen is rather paranoid about mountain lions so she made certain we read the warning sign. There were people around hiking and we weren't going into the deep forest so we all felt pretty safe, well at least Craig and I did. I noticed Karen stayed in between us whenever possible!

Karen remarked, "You know
we'll have to walk back up!"

The landscape is absolutely gorgeous. The trees are huge, the sky is crystal clear and deep blue. The rocks and boulders are very picturesque.

Karen and Craig at
the base of a tall tree

I asked Craig and Karen to walk ahead so I could get a picture that showed how tall the trees are.

Once we descended a very nice concrete path with many switchbacks, we arrived at a very large area of relatively flat terrain. It made the hiking quite comfortable despite the 8,400 foot altitude. We did notice we ran out of breath pretty quickly. 

It was fun looking up while standing by the trunk at the base of these big Sugar Pines. They seemed to climb forever!

Craig took this picture of me at the base of this Sugar Pine. When I saw the

picture I told him I felt like a leprechaun  

Craig and Karen on the trail

Here are a couple more pictures that give you an idea of why we enjoyed the hike so much.

Very impressive rock cliff

Switchback trail to the top

Of course, as Karen remarked, we needed to climb back up to the summit. It was a lot easier going down. Notice how small the people look at the railing on top.

By the time we arrived back at the summit we were hungry. We had planned to eat at the restaurant but the wait was too long. So we got some pizza and a sandwich from the deli like counter. The food was better than I expected, but then we were pretty hungry.

After lunch we toured the visitor center and then climbed more stairs to get above the building to a 360 degree lookout area. There was a nice explanation about the mountain rocks.

It was truly breathtaking! Here are pictures of some of the best views.

Extreme right top behind the trees is Salton Lake

We could see Salton Lake from the summit. The history of the lake is interesting and tragic. You can learn more here. Salton Lake History

Palm Springs and Palm Desert,
(White area above the first level of mountains)

Palm Springs and Palm Desert. Palm Springs and Palm Desert border each other. Palm Springs is an older city which attracted many wealthy people from the L.A. area. The current population of Palm Springs is about 48,000. The city is slowly being updated. Palm Desert is a newer city which continues to grow as an addition to Palm Springs with a population of 54,000.

We enjoyed a relaxed evening after returning to our very comfortable villa. It was a great trip and I decided to return home by driving through the mountains on a scenic highway. Very happy I did.