Valentines Day and more Palm Springs. Feb 13 - 21

We spent part of the afternoon over at the pool. Warm enough to go swimming. Both of us got a little sunburnt even with sunscreen on, so we called it at about 2:30 and came back to the coach. 

We celebrated Valentine's Day a day early, as tomorrow Ray get's his tooth extracted and we didn't know how his mouth would feel to eat. Ray chose Oceana Restaurant in Indio as they have great reviews.

With ourselves all "gussied up" for our special dinner, we arrived for our reservation at 5:30 pm. They offered wine on special for half price and you can take any remainder home, so we bought a bottle. It was delicious.

Fried whole snapper

Spanish grilled octopus.

Our appetizers, crab cake and clam chowder were delicious. Ray's octopus, tender and delicious. Unfortunately, my fish came way overcooked so I sent it back and ordered a prawn cocktail. It wasn't very good either, with no taste and like eating a piece of rubber. Oh well we enjoyed a great night anyways.

Wednesday another gorgeous day. Ray headed off at 8:30 for his appointment. I stayed home and puttered making bread. He returned by 10:30 with half a fat face. Liquid diet today and soft food for two days after that. I took off to Walmart to pick up his prescription for medicated mouth rinse and antibiotics. I also bought him ice cream, yogurt and chocolate pudding. He's a happy man with a whole tub of Haagan Daz for lunch. :) Fortunately I'd frozen a container of beef and barley soup, so  I used my stick blender to make it into a thicker liquid for him. We kept him well-medicated all evening, so he wasn't in too much discomfort and had a good nights sleep.

Thursday and Friday we stayed home and I spent some time making soup so Ray had something to eat. 

Saturday is another gorgeous day and warmer. We headed out at 9:30 to tour the Coachella Valley Preserve with the Thousand Palms Oasis trail. There are many other trails to enjoy within this preserve. On the way, we noticed the wildflowers blooming after the rains we've experienced. Gorgeous.

Established in 1985 as part of the Coachella Valley Preserve, the Refuge serves as a sanctuary for the rare Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard and many other desert dwelling species. This lizard, federally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, is not found any where else in the world. The 3,709-acre Refuge is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in conjunction with the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

The Coachella Valley Preserve System, on the other hand, is cooperatively managed by the Center for Natural Lands Management (CNLM) Thousand Palms Oasis Preserve , the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Area of Conservation and Ecological Concern (ACEC), the US Fish and Wildlife Service Coachella Valley Wildlife Refuge (Refuge), the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) Ecological Reserve and the California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks) Indio Hills State Park. BLM is the largest landowner. The BLM ACEC surrounds the Thousand Palms Preserve. The size of the entire Coachella Valley Preserve System is just over 18,000 acres.

The Thousand Palms Canyon is a wide canyon that sweeps down from the little San Bernardino Mountains, through a gap in the Indio Hills, and washes onto the wide alluvial fan that borders the north edge of Palm Desert. Rainfall in the upper reaches of the hills moves rock, sand, and soil in torrential flash floods from the San Bernardino’s and the Indio Hills onto the vast floodplain at the foot of the Indio Hills. From there the fierce desert winds pick up the lightest of the soil particles, and carry them southeast along the valley floor. As wind speed slows, the particles drop onto the desert floor, creating sweeping dunes of glittering sand. Only a fragment of the once-abundant dunes remain. In addition, the canyon contains a large, rare desert wetland and two palm oases.

This is what the lizard looks like, we did not actually see one.

We found a parking spot pretty quickly and went down the trail to where the docent is. After listening to him talk all about how San Andreas Fault caused the California Palms to thrive, we walked down the boardwalk. Most of the boardwalk trail is closed as it's washed out due to 2 hurricanes, one the end of August and another in October that caused a lot of damage, once again, to the trails.

The California Fan Palms here are the only indigenous palms to California, any others have been imported.  The fruit is small with large pits and very sweet tasting unlike date palms which have much more "meat" to them. The docent let us try some.

The California Fan Palms have "skirts" of old leaves that house a whole bunch of varmits ... a varmit condominium. lol. Native Americans realized that if they burned the skirts, the palms would produce more fruit. They used to grind it up and make a porridge with it.

Off we went down the McCallum Trail and boardwalk.

California Fan Palms need lots of water, with roots only ten to twelve feet down. This is why they grow here on the fault where the water is pushed up to the surface. The water is trapped above the soil, which is made from the two plates grinding the rocks and making a pumice. The pumice is then compressed to resemble clay.

Many rare and listed species use these habitats. The critically endangered desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius) inhabits the newly restored Simone Pond. 

We did see them in the little creek.

The end of the boardwalk for now.

Very Jurasic Park like lol

These palms are 75 to 150 years old.

We had hoped to continue down the McCallum Trail to Simone Lake, about 1.5 mile return trail but as you saw the end of the boardwalk was closed. Here is a picture from google.

We came back to the beginning of the trail and headed in the other direction to the "hill".  This shows the palms where their skirts have been burned.

Ray decided to go up the hill to see the views from the top.

Where's Waldo?

There he goes. 

A great hour and a half adventure. Time to go back to camp for the afternoon. This being President's Day long weekend, the pool and hot tubs are filled with families and small kids. We opted not to go to the pool as it's packed and noisy.

Sunday another gorgeous day but very hazy with smog. Wouldn't want to live here with that happening here all the time. You couldn't even see across to the mountains from the RV Resort.

Today we decided to go and hike up Indian Canyon, which is near Palm Springs, quite a distance from where we are. We get there for 10:30 and are turned around by the park ranger ... no parking space available until 12:30. What now? Since we were close to downtown Palm Springs, we decided to see the Palm Springs Art Museum. Most of their display is Modern Art, which is not our thing, but here we go at $14 each.

The first thing we see in the lobby is the coolest sculpture we've ever seen, all mirror reflections inside.

They have 3 floors of displays with a theatre in the basement.

They have a Native American Display.

Wedding Water Vase with Avamyu Water Serpent

Below we have a rug with the "Whirling-Log", looks familiar doesn't it.

The Glass Room

Pionist dress in glass

Selpetuc Masks 300-600 BC

Pictures of UFO's

Something you can make with your leftover beer and pop cans on an old Satellite Dish. lol

Various other pictures/paintings.

Titled "Is It Safe?"

They have a cool Chandelier on the way downstairs to the theatre.

Back out into the sunshine for a few pictures of the Downtown Park across the street.

We tried to find a place for lunch, but everywhere is packed (due to the President's Day long weekend), so we decided to just go home and eat there. We sat outside listening to all the people at the pool, tons of kids, we opted to stay at our site. Another great day.

Monday, the last day of really warm weather for us at 77F/25C. Off to the Farm Market for some more fresh veggies, especially the artichokes. We can't get enough of them. They also have fresh picked today strawberries .... huge!

Back at our house, the stone guy prepped our entrance way to repoint our rocks in the front of our house. He chipped and ground the old mortar and will redo it.

Here it is with it all cleaned out ready for new mortor.

Tuesday and Wednesday we just hung around and cleaned up stuff, as tomorrow we're on the road again.

Wednesday is our last "pool day"  or sitting in the sun, as the weather is back to sunshine. We won't be as warm in San Diego. In the afternoon we took our last walk around the lake behind our campsite. Great views.

This month's gone so fast and we've had pretty good weather with only a few days of clouds and rain. We saw most of Ray's "list" and still have a few things to see if we come back here again. After a month we're ready to "move on" to other adventures. Here we come San Diego!