Saturday:
Palm Springs/CA:
Joshua Tree National Park
The Mojave Desert is included in it's boundaries but it's landscape is far from sand dunes.  We climbed about 4000 feet to find interesting mixed varieties of rock formation and flat land with, of course, forests of Joshua trees.  There were lots of people walking over the lower rock formations, but we particularly enjoyed watching the full gear rock climbers in the higher elevations.

On the way into Joshua Tree Park, Stan and I pulled over for a quick look at a little art gallery which included "U-Pick Cacti"....no fools, they!  photo

For all you cowboy buffs...Pioneertown in Yucca Valley (named after Roy Rogers "Sons of the Pioneers") was used as a western set in the heyday of the cowboy and western movie industry...remember the Cisco Kid in the 40s and Gene Autry in the 50s?  It's now a western theme town tourist attraction.   We did a quick walk thru of the sets there and settled in for a meal at Pappy and Harriet's....it was a packed house and a relaxing 'down home' dining experience.  Good food and a genuine western atmosphere topped off this day of touring.

Caliente RV Park, where we're staying, is known for it's natural hot springs and they have a beautiful complex of five pools that gradates the heat of these hot springs from warm to hot.  The residents I've talked to swear by this mineral spring water to enhance good health.  photo below

It is almost impossible to capture in photo the magnitude of the wind farm of 4000 wind turbines grouped together near here, but this web site www.palmsprings.com/services/wind.html and other Google sites will do a good job of explaining it.  Today we had 55 mph winds and gusts even higher so they were spinning strong! photo

We were back at the RV in time for Stan to watch Ohio State lose to Kansas...a disappointing loss after having such a big lead!!