We haven't done a lot to blog about, but here is what I have so far.
Here is all you need to know about the demographics of Palm Springs. The road from Desert Hot Springs to Palm Springs has a lot of billboards near the highway. On one side of the road is a billboard for breast augmentation for $3500 and right across the street, the billboard is for assisted living. The next billboard is in Spanish. They have all the bases covered in 3 billboards.
Palm Springs is small and older. I think everything was built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We still want to take a tour of the houses, we just haven't done that yet. We did eat lunch at an old downtown diner. It's weird seeing billboards inside the diner. All the major roads are named after old time stars: Gene Autry, Dinah Shore, Bob Hope, and Frank Sinatra are the ones we have driven on.
Palm Desert is bigger and newer. It seems to be the new place to live around here.
We went on a scenic drive called The Palms to Pines Highway. It starts in Palm Desert and goes up into the mountains between here and San Diego.
That mountain is San Jacinto Peak. We went off to the left of this picture and straight up the mountain. Then we travelled around in the Valley behind this mountain and came out at the highway to the right of this picture.
The first part of the drive is a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain.
You may recognize this stretch of road from many car commercials. What you can't really tell from this picture is how steep it is.
Here are some pictures from the top of the mountain looking down on Palm Desert, Indio, and Coachella. Palm Desert on the left, Indio in the middle, and Coachella on the right.
At this point of the trip, there are no Palms or Pines. The road curves around the hills behind the mountain. We stopped and had lunch at a place called Lake Hemet. It's not prime tourist season so the deli at the place we stopped was closed and all they sold was pre-made sandwiches. They were some lunch meat and a slice of cheese on white bread. It was still $16 for 2 sandwiches and 2 bags of chips.
After Lake Hemet, we started going up. At about 5,000 feet, we started to see the pine trees.
At 6,000 feet, we started seeing snow on the ground in the shadey areas. I don't have pictures because I didn't stop. We weren't that high very long and soon started to go down more switchbacks and hit the valley floor. We came out on Highway 10, west of were we are staying so we made a big loop around San Jacinto Peak.
Next week we will visit Joshua Tree National Park. I hope to get some good pictures there too.
The California curse has struck one more time. The washer/dryer has a problem drying. You set it for 40 or 50 minutes and the timer will count down to 1 minute and stay there. It will continue drying with 1 minute for as long as you let it. You need to turn the machine off, open a small door at the bottom and pull the little unlock lever. Even though you turn the dryer off, it will not unlock the door. The weird part is that if you set the dryer for 30 minutes, it will work just fine. It's only longer that it acts up. The washing machine part works normally. According to the internet, it is probably caused by the heating element acting up. We called a repairman to come look at it because diagnosing things based on the internet is not always a good idea.
In beer news, I have 2 batches still fermenting. The temperatures stay between 66º and 72º so that's right in the prime zone. The IPA should be ready to bottle on Friday and the Amber Ale on Sunday. I ordered another pressurized growler so I will carbonate one from each batch. That should work out fine. We visited Coachella Valley Brewing and had some beers. They were okay, but I didn't feel the need to buy fill a growler with anything they had.
In dog news, Brie likes going out in the desert and walking. There is a little gate near the trailer that lets you out of the park and into the desert. Everyone walks their dogs out there. You have to be careful where you step. It's too cool for snakes or scorpions, but there is a lot of dog poop out there. They do have a dog park here but it is just dirt and sand, pretty much exactly like the desert walk but farther away from the trailer. We took both dogs to the groomer in Desert Hot Springs. We dropped them off at 2:30pm and weren't able to pick them up until around 8:30pm. I guess they were overbooked and had a problem dog that bit the groomer.
That's all for now.
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