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.