The next day it was on to Palm Springs. I have to admit that this is one of the weirdest places I have ever visited, not necessarily in a good way.
There were a number of reasons we stopped there.
In the first place, we were getting close to the end of our trip and I wanted a place from where we could easily drive back to LA airport in one day. I’d already been to LA and seriously, the only good thing about LA is that some of my friends live there. Nup nup nupity nup, I do NOT like LA. It’s big, it’s full of cars and you can’t go anywhere without a car. There seems to be no heart to it.
Secondly, we were getting back to summer in Australia and had experienced some very cold weather and wanted to have some warmer weather.
And importantly: Joshua Tree National Park! More about that later.
As it turned out, Palm Springs is kinda like a suburb of LA, the-same-and-worse in layout. As in, you can’t go anywhere without a car. Everything is dominated by car parks. There is no attractive outdoor seating. If you sit next to the car eating a roll you bought in the supermarket, police and other uniformed monkeys with guns think you’re a druggo. Urgh. Add to that, the average age of (temporary?) residents is about 75.
As I said, weird.
But I discovered this nature park called Indian Canyon which was pretty cool and full of wildlife. Apparently, it’s the largest oasis in the world. The surrounding countryside is certainly very dry and desolate. Kinda depressing, to be honest. Except for the windmill park, that’s cool. Even if every single one of those hundreds upon hundreds of windmills was not moving a single blade. Absolutely frozen. No wind at all.
In the park and Joshua Tree NP, we saw many of the animals that we had not seen in some of the other places. Goats, various birds, a coyote, chipmunks and squirrels. So. Many. Squirrels.
Must Use Bigger Elephants 