Aerial Tram and Joshua Tree National Park

Thursday August 26. Hot again this morning. Already 100 degrees by 9:30. Rode just out of town to the Palm Springs Aerial Tram. It's a cable car with a rotating floor (it rotates twice during the trip up or down) and takes you from the valley floor to the top of the mountain. A vertical rise of 7000 feet and a temperature drop of 35 degrees! At the top their are a number of hikes you can take around the mountain. Some are quite long. I did two shorter ones. One that took you around the valley on the top of the mountain and another that took you to a number of lookouts where you could look down on Palm Springs, or the windmill farm, or the valley and its highways. Scrambling and climbing over the rocks seemed harder and more tiring than I expected. I guess that was because of the altitude change.

Interesting to see the change in plants from the desert at the bottom to the giant trees at the top. I found a couple of secluded sitting places looking out over the valley and just relaxed listening to the wind, the birds and the distant thunder. Stayed for about three hours and then headed back down to ride eastward.

It was very hot again when I rode to Joshua Tree National Park. Just after I paid the entrance fee and rode in, it actually rained for a few minutes. Not enough to get very wet, but just enough to cool things down a bit. The ride through the park as beautiful. The Joshua Trees are very unique looking and there are other different types of cacti and succulents that reminded me of my days of collecting these types of plants with Tom O'Malley. There were very few people driving through the park, the road was good and there were lots of places to stop and look about. I made a picnic of a Subway sandwich I had purchased before entering.

When I left I had an hour drive, about 60 miles, to Blythe California, right on the Arizona border. It was along a good interstate, but it was busy with trucks, really hot, and there were thunderstorms above the mountains on either side of the valley, and it was really windy. I got blown around a lot. It was not a relaxing ride. The only good thing was there was a beautiful sunset behind me.

Arrived safely at a Super8, phoned Mom and then had a swim in another very hot pool. That's it, another super day.