A week in Palm Desert
On Friday the 15th of November Van and I headed south to Palm Desert. We had booked a week at a resort there earlier in the year, thinking we’d be getting away from the cool weather here. As we all know it’s still feeling like summertime here, so we just went somewhere even warmer. We drove down in two days; the first we left in the late afternoon from the Valley, stopped for dinner with the grand-baby and then went as far as Gustine. We got up early and hit the road around 8:30am to finish the drive. It was much longer than anticipated - for some reason my car’s GPS took us through downtown LA, which was cool to see but slow. We arrived around 6pm, just in time to get a bite to eat.
Our first dinner was at a small Mexican restaurant recommended to us by the resort staff. It was quite good and filling. I had two tacos plus the usual sides. After dinner, tired from driving, we hit the hay early.
Most of our days were spent the same - get up, have coffee and breakfast, relax, maybe soak in the hot tub for a bit, then load up the bikes and head out. Our first forays into the desert yielded poor biking results. We found a trail to a “lake” - really a reservoir - and found ourselves walking more than riding and when we did ride, it was sand. Ugh. We ended up taking streets back to the car - so what should have been a nice 8 mile ride turned into 15 in the heat of the day. The second day we found some Ok trails but nothing really fun.
On day three we were inspired to drive down to the Salton Sea. We had read about a wildlife refuge there and thought that would be fun. The scenery on the drive was interesting and we found the refuge easily. Unfortunately, we had been misinformed about being able to ride our bikes, so we walked instead. It was very full of life - tons of birds mainly; we didn’t see any snakes, thankfully. After we left there we found a date store and had the obligatory date shake; YUM. Very filling, too. We also picked up a box of the biggest, most delicious dates I’ve ever had. We drove home around the other side of the lake and thus got to see a lot of the area.
Having given up on the idea of riding our bikes, the following day we headed up to Palm Springs and lunch at Sherman’s Deli. We enjoyed sightseeing and the food at the deli was delicious. I enjoyed a liverwurst sandwich - it was nearly 2” thick with liverwurst - on rye. Van had tongue, also piled high. From there we drove up to the tram and took the aerial tram up to the top of the mountains, about 8,000’. It was much cooler up there and quite beautiful. We hiked around a bit and got to see some incredible views of the desert before heading back down.
On our next to last day we decided to go back to the first area we had ridden in and see if we could find any other trails. We lucked out - another visitor, a man named Gary from Vancouver Island, had been riding there for the past two months and he showed us several options that didn’t involve large rocks and cliffs. We found great trails and loops and ended up having a blast for the last two days of our stay.
Besides riding the bikes, we found that the hot tub outside our door was not used by anyone except us; ditto the BBQ. So we felt like we had our own private set up. The pool was saltwater, another plus, and so close we could walk out, hop in and cool off, then go do something else. We only ate out a couple of times - sushi for lunch, tacos another day, then a French restaurant for the last evening. We made it to the movies one night and saw Ford vs. Ferrari, which I loved. I happen to like cars and loud engines, so it was perfect for me.
We headed home on Saturday morning, leaving the resort at 4:30am and, after stopping to see the grand-baby and getting a bite of lunch, we made it home around 5:00pm. It was a long day but it felt good to be home again.