She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain when She Comes....

Yesterday morning dawned beautifully at the Shady Lane RV Park. I had a last minute discussion with Jim about the strange trees in the park. He was full of interesting information. First of all, this park was established in 1929. The date of 1977 just refers to the present owner and when bought the park. And the strange huge trees I asked about were planted in the beginning, according to Jim...sometime around 1929. They are "Athel" trees, he explained, a member of the salt tree family. On further questioning, he offered that they were not native Californian trees as he was born there and never seen any others before. According to Jim, their only disadvantage was that their branches did not grow from the trunk like ordinary trees, but out of the bark and in windy periods were prone to crashing down, so the extreme pruning they used was necessary to protect RVs and vehicles and people. I was quite pleased now that I had taken the time to ask him about them.

(Note: a little investigation revealed that Athel trees are an invasive kind of Tamarind found throughout the southwest US. See http://www.desertmuseum.org/invaders/invaders_tamarisk.php)

Before we left Barstow, we did a leisurely cruise around town and found a number of its charms. Barstow has a number of interesting desert buildings, is an Amtrak Train Centre on the Santa Fe Line, has a great little section of the old Route 66, and a well preserved Main Street...here are the photos of our last twirl around town.

We departed around noon in a leisurely fashion and headed south down highway 247, another 2 lane road that wound around rock outcroppings across dusty ancient sea beds...

We traveled for about an hour, eventually crossing the last mountain pass and down into the town of Yucca Valley. The last rim rock was outstanding and we commented that it was very reminiscent of similar rim rock that we had seen on our road trip down the Baja Peninsula of Mexico in 1991. Mounds of huge rounded balls of rock clustered together in the most interesting of shapes.

The houses here were very similar to the Santa Fe style in New Mexico and were a sharp contrast to the usual dilapidated desert trailer homes scattered across the dusty plain.

Yucca Valley was in the heart of the Joshua Tree territory and many fine specimens rose out of the town's vacant lots and lined the main street. The Joshua Tree is not a tree at all, but a member of the Agave plant family. There is a whole National Park named after them and dedicated to preserving them. They are, indeed, unique.

Now we were very close to Palm Springs, and the snowy mountain top we could see rising over the rim rock was in fact part of the mountain chain that ringed Palm Springs. We plummeted downwards, over the last height of land around 3,000 feet into the valley below where Palm Springs lay at 417 feet above sea level.

The temperature shot upwards from 60 F to a very soft and pleasant 77F and we rolled down the windows and enjoyed the mild breezes as we cruised through Indio to the Riverside County Park, tucked around a man-made fishing lake, just up behind the Jack Nicklaus golf course. It is the only public campground inside Palm Springs and it is a little oasis of peace backed by wonderful craggy mountains in a very sheltered situation. We fell off to sleep with no road sounds to distract us.

In the morning we woke up to the strangely familiar sound of pitter patter on the roof. I guess we just had to bring a bit of our BC weather south to Palm Springs!!   Today we resigned ourselves to a soggy foggy miserable day and did shopping, cleaning and organizing. The day went pleasantly enough but certainly gave us no opportunity for any photos of merit.

Tomorrow the sun is supposed to shine so hopefully our photos will continue. The relaxing part of the trip has just begun.