Vernon likes to shave his beard off every ten years or so, especially when there is a big trip about to start. Alison, Cielo and Eero all agreed that he looked "weird" without it. If nothing else, looking at beard length was a good way to help put all the pictures in order later.
We had picnic lunches almost every day. Our first one was at the very windy Pacheco State Park off of Highway 152, about two hours out from our house. Everything light ended up with something heavy on it to keep things from blowing away.
This was a long day - our longest driving day of the trip (more than seven hours just driving, plus stops). One of those stops was at a rest area where an ice cream truck was parked, but it was so hot the popsicles started melting instantly. Despite our best efforts, extensive washing up was still required after eating.
It was such a long day that we thought about finding a hotel before our goal of Palm Springs. We got off the highway in Pasadena, and actually went to a couple of Best Westerns, but due to a soccer game going on that day beween the Los Angeles Galaxy and FC Barcelona, all the hotels were full. So we ate a great dinner at a little place named Chiquita Bonita, then pushed on to get to Palm Springs.
We made it, and the next day we went out to Andreas Canyon to look around. This picture is from Palm Canyon, one of three canyons there. They are well-known for the large number of Fan Palms growing there.
You don't have to go far into Palm Canyon to get to this beautiful shady spot by a stream. It was an amazing contrast to the desert surrounding it.
This little guy is one of the more coloful animals we saw on our trip.
These are pretty colorful animals, too. They are holding their battery-powered fans that are also squirt guns - you can spray yourself and the fan turns it into a cooling mist.
We ate that evening at Pomme Frite, a Belgian/French restaurant in Palm Springs. Like many of the restaurants there, it had its own cooling mist spraying out from the awnings in front. It has a really good Belgian beer list, too.
That afternoon we went and rode on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. It is a ski lift style vehicle (but huge - each of the two cars can carry 80 passengers) that takes you two and a half vertical miles up a mountain, rotating 360 degrees the whole way so you can look out in each direction. In this picture you can see Palm Springs on the right and the desert and part of Joshua Tree National Park in the far background.
At the top of the tramway there is a pretty big visitor center, including a restaurant, small museum, gift shop (of course), and an outdoor snack bar that sells, among other things, push-ups.
There is also a nice couple of nature trails at the top of the mountain. And, after the sweltering heat (about 115 degrees) of Palm Springs, it was at a very pleasant temperature - about thirty degrees cooler.
Here's Cielo reading one of the interpretive panels on the walk.
Eero and Cielo admiring some of the pine cone specimens.
