Scenes from my Desert Road Trip- the First Day

Seeing the posts Solly Mack and Fizzgig did of their road trips inspired me to post this!

The last two years I spent part of the winter in Santa Ana, California. One thing I really wanted to do was go out into the desert and just experience it. (Not much desert around Portland!) In Jan. last year I visited my cousin in the Phoenix area and took a roundabout way, spending a day around Palm Springs and then going south to see the Salton Sea. Here's some photos from day one, I was very much a tourist!

Going through San Gorgonio Pass, one of the windiest areas in the country. You go through the Cabazon wind farm, over 3000 wind turbines, producing enough power for 300,000 people.


The Cabazon Dinosaurs are also located here. Of course I had to stop!





You can see how windy it is, look at the palm trees... it was hard to stand up straight.




A young family, I thought this was a cute picture


One last photo of the Brontosaurus, there's a store inside, but it wasn't open. The dinosaurs are now the site of a "creationist museum", I didn't have the time or inclination to see it...


Next stop was the Cabot Yerxa Pueblo, built by the town founder and discoverer of the hot springs. Now a museum, over 20 years he built this 30 room adobe. There's a tour to go inside but I missed it so I just wandered around the grounds. It's shady here which is nice (even though it was January it was like 90 degrees here). There's a good museum/gallery here focusing on Native American arts, it was nice and cool inside.




The sculpture here is called Waokiye by the artist Peter Wolf Toth. It stands 43 feet tall






A view of Desert Hot Springs from the pueblo. Somewhere in this picture the San Andreas fault runs through, which created the hot springs. Also on the horizon you can see some of the thousands of wind turbines. I really liked the town, about 25,000 population.


There's a lot of cool mid century architecture in this area. This place was for sale.


On the road to Palm Springs I was stopped at a red light and this was the scene. So I took a picture! I don't know why but I like this picture.


So, in Palm Springs, I wandered around. Then I found the Marilyn Monroe statue (it's not there anymore,I guess it travels around the country. Now in New Jersey)




In case you're wondering, yes I took pictures of her butt and no, I'm not going to post any! This is as close as you get.


And across the street was this sculpture of Lucille Ball.


Down the street, Sonny Bono...


I went into the residential area, the movie star colony. I could not believe how lush the landscape is here, out in the desert. It seems there isn't the water shortage as much here, Palm Springs sits on a giant aquifer.


Across the street is the Robots Sculpture Garden, by artist Kenny Irwin, Jr. Two acres of robots, aliens, Christmas and Islam. You can tour by appointment, I didn't know this so just took some pictures from outside. I'm sure someday I'll go back and see what's inside!










It was after 3 pm by this time, I had a long way to go so I hit the road again. I stopped at a Tiki motel, where I could have gotten a room for 45$, unfortunately they had no vacancies...But here's a picture of their lobby...


So I drove 30 miles to Indio and spent the night, which turned out OK, I had a lot of mileage to go and a lot more to see. The next day I started out at 8 AM, visited the Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain, went through the dunes and arrived at my cousin's house at 10 PM. But that was the second day.