london1967 | Mar. 16th, 2015

My second day in Palm Springs didn’t start well, as I had one of my 'episodes' in the morning just after getting up: temporary hearing loss followed by vertigo and vomiting. So we shelved the planned trip to the Joshua Tree National Park and sat by the pool until about 2 pm when I started to feel better.
I was lucky that it was a mild attack and it was on a day where we could swap plans and didn’t have to travel.

In the afternoon, we went to the nearby Moorten Botanical Garden, which was established in 1939 by the Moorten family who still own it. The garden specialises in cacti and other desert plants, which are divided according to the desert of origin. It was an enjoyable visit.

As I felt so much better, we decided to drive on to the Indian Canyons, which are part of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. They are oases in the middle of the desert where thanks to the presence of water California Fan Palms (the only palm tree species native to California) and birds abound.

We had a couple of nice walks in Palms Canyon, one down to the canyon floor

and one to a small waterfall.

We stopped at the Andreas Canyon on the way out.

I really enjoyed watching the hummingbirds at the ‘feeding stations’ near the visitor centre (I know that they are commonplace in the US – indeed we saw them in San Diego and Phoenix too – but I had never seen them out of captivity and I was thrilled.)

After getting back to the resort, we went out into town catching the Palm Springs "Buzz" free trolley service. On Thursday evening the 'VillageFest' is on, a street fair with food, art, crafts spreading down the main street for several blocks.
It was rather busy everywhere but we managed, after a wait, to get a table at Bill's Pizza: we loved the pizza. We had a 18" one: half Chicken Alfredo (Adrian's choice) and half Northern Italian.

Most of our last day in Palm Springs was spent out of town, visiting the Joshua Tree National Park.

Our first port of call was the visitor centre at the north-west entrance, where one of the rangers decided that I looked like Peter Townshend of The Who. I’m sure that Mr Townshend wouldn’t be pleased with the comparison, and neither am I now that Wikipedia tells me that he’ll be 70 this year! LOL!

The park is really lovely with some amazing rock formations. We did the 1-mile walk around the ‘Hidden Valley’ which was apparently used by rustlers to hide stolen livestock. We both really enjoyed that: it was quite magical.

(No, we didn't do any climbing!)

Then we stopped at Keys View from which you have a view of the Coachella Valley, the San Andreas Fault and the Salton Sea.
It was a bit hazy but the vistas were still great.

We drove down to the south of the park stopping to admire the ‘Skull Rock’

and later stroll around the Cholla Cactus 'Garden'.

(Awww.. a teddy bear!)

On the way back to Palm Springs we called at the Shields Date Garden in Indio

where we had the world-famous date shake. I had mine and finished Adrian’s… let’s just say that all that fibre had quite a 'moving' effect on me, later that evening! LOL!

The garden is rather nice but, as it has a collection of statues and scenes from Jesus’ life recently relocated from a biblical garden in Vancouver (we were given a leaflet with all the descriptions and biblical passages), I felt slightly uneasy. I wouldn’t have a problem with something like that in Europe but I thought you never known with American Christian fundamentalists. (I know, I should be ashamed of my prejudices).