A visit to Palm Springs....and we head back to Yosemite on the Tioga Pass.

This will be a short post...I mainly wanted to post some pictures. We decided to make a quick visit to Palm Springs last week...having heard most of our lives about the desert town where Bob Hope and many other movie starts had/have homes. Since we're getting really good at packing and we have no schedules to meet....we hit the road early last Tuesday and arrived in Palm Springs around 7:00 that night. It was around 100 degrees, but didn't really feel that hot due to the humidity levels around 10%. In terms of Florida heat, it felt about 90.

After checking in to our room and taking Tuck for a quick walk, we headed into the historic district to check it out....about a five minute walk from our hotel. Who knows...maybe Bob Hope's ghost was wandering around holding his famous golf club? Well....it was different than we had imagined....smaller, more "touristy", not as fancy....but lots of new buildings going up. It was obvious that for much of the past 50 years, not much had changed in downtown Palm Springs....and perhaps that's the way the residents want it? On the outskirts of town, however, things were entirely different. The town is ringed with very upscale golf resorts and gated communities. We spent a day looking around at houses, just to see what the area had to offer. Our conclusion....if you have a million dollars (or more) to spend and you want a very cool mid-century modern home...Palm Springs is the place to be. There are literally hundreds of these classic homes in the downtown area. The surrounding golf communities, while very upscale, all looked pretty much alike.

The next day we headed home and instead of retracing our steps, we decided to take a detour and head home via Bishop, CA....one of our new favorite towns. Bishop sits in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the beautiful Owens Valley. After taking Tuck to the local city park for a swim in the creek which runs through town, we grabbed some barbecue and a beer and started charting out the next day's trip. Our drive from Bishop went right by Yosemite, so why not revisit one of the most beautiful parks in the country? Claudia realized as we got closer, that the park rangers had just reopened the Tioga Pass road into Yosemite....so off we went. Since this road had just reopened to the public, the tourists hadn't figured it out yet and we were able to drive all the way into the park and explore some new areas. Very few cars on the road and not a tour bus in sight (note....a lot of these roads are too steep and too narrow for buses anyway). We had a great afternoon and Tuck got in another swim in beautiful Tanaya Lake, which had just thawed.

I've mentioned in a post a while back that everyone who visits our national parks should make it a point to watch the Ken Burns documentary about them. Just do it...you'll be glad you did. Anyway, I was re-watching one of the episodes tonight (part 4) and this episode dealt with the increasing popularity of the parks going all the way back to the 1940's...and how this popularity led to many confrontations between the parks department and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club. Confrontations about too many lodges, too many dams, too many visitor centers that looked like giant Dairy Queens and....too many new roads cutting through the wilderness. areas.  And guess what....one of the most historic struggles between the environmental groups and the parks department dealt with...The Tioga Pass road that we had just driven last week. Who knew? It was a monumental battle in court and out in the park itself, with demonstrators blocking bulldozers attempting to carve the very road that we drove. Eventually, after a decade-long struggle, the road did get built. I have to tell you, it's one beautiful road...but I also have to admit that it does cut right through one of the most beautiful valleys in Yosemite. Knowing the full story of this road, I'll never take it for granted again. 

Cheers,

Wayne, Claudia & Tuck