Holiday Inn Express Palm Desert (Rancho Mirage-Golf)

... more importantly in some semblance of fit I could have scaled the 10500 peak of San Jacinto Mountain the highest in Southern Ca but that is well beyond me currently even without the added bonus of thin air! I settled for the 1.5 mile loop round the valley and was happily wandering, wondering and saying hello (and even a few Kia Ora's) to everyone when I made way for a group of young people who HAD to tell me all ...

... most enormous wind farm I have ever seem – there must have a thousand turbines of varying sizes both in the valley and on the hills. If I was better read I could make some comments in line with Cervantes Don Quixote but as I have only read a summary in the Twiterature book I should probably defer to someone with greater knowledge.

Finally and on the brink of sleep I made it to Rancho Mirage where many of the streets are ...

... Happy hour at Morton steakhouse is the best! The spritzer is so refreshly and fruity! $5 pupus enough to get you stuffed! Then a late dinner at city wok a little buzzed was delish! Some sake bombs and Asian fusion is a deadly combo. The shrimp is from the same breeding program that steve works in Hawaii. Great stories, laughs and good times! What a great way to end the day! Jolie and i's adventure to the ...

... After seeing their head lamps bobbing up the hillside on the correct route we ended up retracing our route and catching up again. I told them we had been spreading the ashes of a dead friend on the trail. They gave their sympathy's and "Awww that is so sad and sweet.' I told them I was lying, and with that Martin and I continued our rapid pace up the steep incline of San Jacinto.
-It is just before sunrise, and we are taking a short break. The stillness of ...

... medieval.

Topping it off were the multiple factions of friends we got to experience it with. It's always cool when worlds collide at such a fun event. The grounds were at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. It was beautiful, the best weather. The guy who does the lighting for their shows had 140 palm trees surrounding the venue lit up as well. He also rigged the first 20 or so out from each side of the stage ...

... the next couple of days, but Nike was about the only shop available.

Going to check out a restaurant called Wang's in the Desert for dinner.

Please bear with me re my boring posts. We have not yet managed to buy cables and adaptors, so cannot quite write so much and upload pics.

Hope to have something tomorrow.

... rid of this damn poison-sumac situation that has been invading my life and sanity for well over a week at this point, and without success, returned to my useless calamine lotion as we waited outside.  Soon Sarah arrived and after deciding that we probably wouldn't have time to camp because we had to leave so early the next day, we decided to make a day trip out of it, seeing that it was Sarah's first day off of work in quite some time. We piled into her car (we didn't ...

... animals
running onto the street. We took the palm springs aerial tram up onto
the mountains. The 10 minute ride gives you amazing vies of the
mountains. It is a very pretty place to see and our last stop. I loved
our time here in California and there are many memories we will take
back with us.

Palm Dessert is bit of a frightening place for a European: the lawns are too green and dense, the streets are too clean, and pedestrians are near extinct. It's a man-made oasis embraced by picturesque-from-afar, scrubby-from-close-by hills ...

... that more greatly epitomizes a "love/hate" relationship. Nestled within the vacant, soulless expanses of strip malls and palm trees, there is a little pocket-o-love at 10 Mandarin, and I revel in it. With that said, however, there was definitely a thick layer of what can only be scientifically labeled as "brown" as I came off of the grapevine into the lovely San Fernando Valley ...