Last Days in Palm Springs; Marooned in the Desert!

At Palm Springs Thousand Trails, Desert Palms, California...

It has been a really novel and interesting visit here in this playground of the wealthy. We have felt a little like the Clampetts among the million-dollar homes, the landscaped street medians and the 126 golf courses. And I've already talked about the price of other things like restaurants and fuel and, oh yes, let's not forget toffee at 30 bucks a pound. 

One thing we never got used to was the unavailability of bags at checkout stands in grocery stores or Walmarts--unless you wish to buy one, of course. Once we figured this out, we would take bags with us when we went shopping but would inevitably forget and leave them in the car. The colliding forces of habit and old age do not serve us very well, I'm afraid. 

Another odd thing was the absence of plastic straws; we hadn't seen paper straws in years, and no, they don't hold up any better than they did when I was a kid. I'm glad that Californians' worries have diminished to the extent that there is a law dictating what kind of drinking straws are allowed to be used. I'm just having a hard time figuring out why they can give us paper straws for our drinks but can't give us paper bags at the grocery stores. And, oh yes, there's one more thing: Donut shops here are not like those in Texas, where most of them are closed by mid-afternoon. Here in California, they stay open late. (Don't ask me how I know.) 

We've learned some interesting things from our tours. We were wondering why the landscaping is so lush and green everywhere in the Palm Springs area, considering the terrible years-long drought and resultant water shortages in California. We noticed that sprinklers seemed to be on at all hours, and we were wondering how this could be in a state so desperate for water?

The answer is that Palm Springs and the eight cities surrounding it sit atop the gigantic Coachella Valley aquifer that contains about 12 trillion gallons of water--fed by the White Water River, but mostly from snowmelt off the surrounding mountains. The valley's water district manages the water carefully, using recycled water as much as possible for the golf courses, each of which uses about a million gallons a day for irrigation. Thanks to the gift of the aquifer to the desert, water never seems to be a problem.

During our last days here, we had a couple of interesting adventures. We took the Palm Springs Tramway from the desert floor up to the 8,500-foot level of San Jacinto Mountain--the iconic 10,000-foot peak that appears in most photos of Palm Springs:

 The tram was built in the mid-60s, and there is a park with hiking trails at the top, allowing visitors a 30-degree relief from the desert's summer heat that can soar well above 100 degrees:

Of course, we were visiting Palm Springs in the winter, when the temperature at the desert floor is in the low 70s. If you subtract the 30-degree temperature drop at the 8,500-foot level at the end of the tram ride, you get what? Snow; that's what:

 Yes, the white stuff you see beyond the railing where Sandy is standing on the top platform is, indeed, snow. The temperature at this level was 37 degrees with a strong breeze blowing. Neither of us had dressed for this, so we didn't spend very long outside the visitor center. The more insightful of our readers may ask themselves, "Wasn't the reason for Mike and Sandy's wintering in the Southwest to escape the possibility of snow and cold weather?" Well, your insight would be correct and, apparently, better than our own.  Okay, maybe I'm hyping this a bit, but, while outside on the platform, we did laugh at the irony of having wandered into the very kind of weather we were trying to escape.

We did stay outside long enough to take a couple of photos of Palm Springs and the valley below and, as you can imagine, the view was spectacular. I really liked this photo, taken just as the sun was  setting. See the red tops on the San Bernardino mountains in the distance?

In the photo below, you can see the Coachella Valley and the city of Palm Springs. The lower arrow is pointing to the Palm Springs International Airport, which is very near downtown. The dark line running diagonally between the two arrows is Interstate 10.  The upper arrow is pointing to the approximate location of the San Andreas Fault, a geological feature that has always been fascinating to me and which will receive some attention a little later in this post.

We took a tour on the next day out in the desert to take a look at where the San Andreas fault runs through the area. In case you don't know, this fault line is a major one of many that run through California. It is the linear boundary where the Pacific tectonic plate slides very slowly northwestward against the North American tectonic plate, moving southeastward. Due to this movement, it is an area that produces several earthquakes a day, most so small as to be undetectable by humans. Scientists tell us, however, that it is overdue for a massive earthquake, which we hoped would not occur while we were out there in the desert, driving around on top of it. 

According to the scientists, the plates move only about 10 centimeters per year and, if you do the math, Palm Springs will be about where San Francisco is now in about 16 million years, and San Francisco will be underwater in the Pacific Ocean. This will create all sorts of problems. 

For example, Tony Bennett will have to revise his iconic song to read, "I left my heart in Palm Springs." Somehow, it just doesn't seem right. But Tony probably won't be around then, either; isn't he already about 16 million years old?  Oh, I see I'm digressing; let's get back to our tour.

Our tour vehicle was a 10-passenger open-air Hummer. If you know anything about a Hummer, you'll know that it was built as a larger and more robust replacement for the iconic U. S. Army Jeep. It was designed for off-road driving and built like a dump truck with a ride to match. I explained to Sandy beforehand that the tour would take us off paved roads or even identifiable roads and that the ride would be somewhat different from the gliding air-suspension smoothness to which she is accustomed in Phannie. The fact that she--a person for whom 'roughing it' means having to wait too long for room service--agreed to go along is quite a testament to her being a good sport and her willingness to accommodate something only I wanted to do, however knuckle-headed it was to her; I was impressed. And to prove she was there, here is her photo in the Hummer, bouncing along in the desert, God bless her:

So, let's talk a bit more about the San Andreas fault. I wasn't aware of this, but there are only a few places in California where its location is readily discernible. In other places, like near Palm Springs, you have to know what to look for and, not being a geologist, I didn't know what to expect. We hadn't gone far until the driver pulled up to a group of large palm trees that formed an oasis, of sorts, in the desert:

The palm trees were huge and were grouped there because of the presence of water. The water was seeping upward from the underground aquifer at the precise location of the San Andreas fault, which lies directly below the pool of water in the photo below:

This was not what I was expecting at all, but geologists rely on clues like this and others along the fault line to identify it. The next photo shows an uplifted area that continues to rise along the tortured area of the fault:

 To the right of the photo, you can see some of the palm trees of the oasis.

It was all very interesting and soon, we climbed aboard the Hummer to continue our buckboard-like ride through the desert to God knows where. We hadn't gone far until, while climbing a fairly steep hill, the Hummer's engine sputtered and died. The driver made several futile attempts to restart it, then hopped out and raised the hood, as if he knew what was wrong. Sandy looked at me with that look of someone facing a firing squad. She didn't look upward, I think for fear of seeing buzzards circling overhead. I turned back and looked straight ahead, not knowing exactly what was in store for me, as she knows where I keep the firearms. At that point, I was hoping for the big earthquake.   

I took out my cell phone and noticed that we still had two bars of signal! There was a chance, then, that we would be saved, after all! I shared that information with Sandy, but that didn't do much to soften "the look."  The driver also still had cell signal, so he called his company to inform them of our plight. They said a rescue Hummer would be along in about an hour.  Fortunately, it was a very pleasant temperature in the desert, and the driver had plenty of bottled water and snacks aboard, so this was clearly not the end for us.

Because the engine was trying to start with each attempt, it seemed to be starving for fuel going slightly uphill. The menfolk talked among each other and decided we might help matters if we could get the Hummer turned around and headed back downhill. So we all climbed off, leaving the women and driver aboard, and pushed the Hummer backward to a spot where it could turn around. Once the vehicle was pointed downhill again, the engine started, and we continued backtracking until we met the rescue Hummer. Once we had climbed aboard that vehicle, our Hummer's engine died again, as it was no longer was pointed downhill. The new Hummer was diesel-powered, and there were no more problems while we returned to our pickup points. The driver and company were very apologetic, of course, and promised to refund our fares.

Thus ended our tour of the San Andreas fault, about which I learned a lot (for free, as it turned out), and we are still living to tell more stories of our adventures. On top of that, Sandy was sweet about the whole ordeal. She knew that "the look" was all that was needed to express her sentiment at the time. She is a Godsend, and has been for 44 years. I took her out to a nice dinner, and this is one of those things that we--well, mostly I--will laugh about for the rest of our lives. I just wish I had thought to have taken some photos of what went on during the 'marooning.' It was priceless.

And so ends our two weeks at Palm Springs. It was a great time, and we are still making those memories, aren't we?  San Diego is next on our itinerary, so our next report will be from there.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood