PALM SPRINGS

I wasn't going to put our trip to Palm Springs on my blog but so many people ask about what it was like that I realize there's not much out there to explain it. I actually didn't take many pictures so it won't be very interesting but here is what we saw. We didn't rent a car which was a mistake as although we could easily walk to and from our hotel to downtown, sight seeing without a car is out of the question. 

This is the view to the West from the balcony of our hotel. This strip of mountain is all down one side on the west and one side on the east of the valley. 

 Downtown Palm Springs is mostly comprised of buildings that look like those below. Only large hotels seem to be more than two floors and palm trees like those below line the main street.

We found the sign below about sitting or lying on the sidewalk to be amusing. The traffic is racing by right next to the narrow sidewalks so I don't know why anyone interested in continuing with their life would dare sit or lie down.

Without a car we did a lot of walking and this is the residential area. As you can see there are no or very few sidewalks but during the day there wasn't much traffic so walking on the road was relatively safe. Checking out the beautiful homes is rather difficult however as these hedges were around twenty feet high and thick enough to allow only glimpses of what was behind them.



Below are the seed clusters on the palm trees, we thought it might be dates until I zoomed in and saw that they were small seeds.

This is the main street, Palm Canyon Drive. Every Thursday evening it is closed to traffic and a multitude of booths are set up selling food and trinkets. At night there are so many people that it is difficult to move from one end to the other but mostly it is tourists who are not in a hurry.               

This is Palm Canyon Drive being shut down again for a bicycle race with over 5000 participants. There wasn't a vacant room in the valley because of this race.

We were in P. Springs in Feb and the weather was unseasonably hot, high 80s so we would walk in the morning and then relax by the pool in the afternoons. Mostly the skies were vivid blue with not a cloud anywhere but this day these interesting ones appeared and must have had moisture thus the rainbow effect. I didn't go for my camera until the show was almost finished but at times the whole sky was a rainbow. 

This is the same picture as above only I put my sunglasses over the camera lens to help show the colors.

 

The rainbows are gone and just these interesting formations with the clouds going every which way are left.                                                                                                                                                 

Vines in the pool area were covered with these flowers. I don't know the name of them so if anyone
does please let me know. Found the answer ... it is a Pohutakawa plant.

This is how it looked underneath.

One last look at the tropical scene and we were gone home the next day.

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MESA VERDE CLIFF DWELLINGS

This is one of the sites we really looked forward to the most and we were not disappointed. We got there very early, an hour before the ranger station opened, as we were so enthusiastic. We wanted to get the tour to go down into the Cliff Dwelling and were lucky to get the first one and even luckier to get Ranger Jim. He wanted to become a ranger since he was five years old and then when he was old enough to succeed he had to work at other places for twenty years before he got the cliff dwellings. He's not leaving and that is a good thing for the tourists as he is well informed and tells the history well.

As usual, click on the first picture for larger pictures in a slide show if you don't want to read my ramblings.



This is the approach to the Mesa Verde where the cliff dwellings are. We have to drive up to the very top on switch back roads and were happy to be doing so early in the morning when we were almost the only ones making the drive.

Above.
The view from about half way up. It was misty and perhaps a bit polluted down below so it's hard to make anything out but it is a long way down there.



We arrive on the top to find the forest burned out. This isn't unusual for the tops of these mesas, the area around the Grand Canyon is the same. Lots of lightening strikes up at the top.

Above.This is The Spruce Tree House which can be viewed right behind the museum and is not accessible by tourists.Below is a close up of the buildings on the right hand side of this picture.


A close up of the right hand side buildings. This is one of the sites where the people actually lived as opposed to the Cliff Dwelling Site that was reserved for ceremonies.

These are the cliffs that they built into and they built on both sides. That's amazing in itself but apparently they visited each other on a daily basis. The average height of the men was 5'2 and weight was 120 pounds. Talk about fit!!

A better view of what they navigated.



































One of the dwellings.

Some of the dwellings were on two levels of rocks.

This picture gives a good idea of how far below the top they built their dwellings. I assume none of them were afraid of heights.

The circular areas are called Kivas and were used for social or ceremonial sessions.

They used the top of the Mesa to grow their crops and hunt. They used to live on the top as well but as the tribe grew they needed more room for their crop growing.



















The indentations are for climbing. They put ladders up to them and then climbed the rest of the way.

Above and below is the Sun Temple. It was built but never used.

Still the Sun Temple. There were no doors leading in so they had planned to come through the roof which was a common entry or perhaps through the 'window' opening above.

The Cliff Palace from afar.

The Cliff Palace. The most photographed site in the area. Our ranger said that they did not live here, that it was used exclusively for ceremony but the pamphlet states otherwise. It was built from rocks brought down from the mesa that were removed from a building they deconstructed. After all that work it was abandoned 80 years later.

Here we go down the steps for our guided tour of the Cliff Palace.

After going down you go up a ladder...........

Then around a corner

The left hand corner comes into view.

There it is in all it's glory. This was not reconstructed, only cleaned up from the debris that was lying around.                                                                                                                                                  

A small section under the overhang that doesn't look big enough for anyone but most likely used for storage.                                                                                                                                              

The way out.

Inside one of the kivas. No idea what the round circular things are that are laid out at the back. We weren't allowed to enter any of the structures.

This kiva shows the fire pit, a ventilation shaft behind the small wall of stones. The small stone in front of the fire pit apparently is their communication to their ancestors. Since their buried them they believed that they had to consult them through a hole in the ground.

Their art work is visible on the walls of this shaft, protected from the elements by the overhang above and the sides of the shaft.

The ventilation shafts were interconnected.  The space between the two pillars was an altar of some sort.

The inside of one of the ventilation shafts.

Looking back before we leave.

Up more stairs.

Up some steeper stairs.

Still more.

Finally the ladder to the top.