ANAHEIM, PALM DESERT, JOSHUA TREE, MOJAVE DESERT (continued from Disneyland) August 27, 2000 With the help of the Hertz lady (the navigation system), we got the heck out of Anaheim and over to Palm Desert with only a stop at McDonalds on the way. It’s only 100 miles from Anaheim to Palm Desert so it’s a nice little Sunday afternoon drive. The thing about Palm Desert and the other desert cities is that you are driving east on I-10 and see exit signs for the cities, but you do not see any cities. Palm Desert is one of the eastern most cities, so we took the exit and turned right. All you can see is desert sand on both sides of the road. Drive about 5 or 10 miles and all of a sudden, everything is green. Golf courses galore. It looks like a retirement town. See the Desert Cities from a flight I took in 2003. The Desert Springs Resort is on Country Club Drive and it is beautiful. When you drive in the driveway, there is golf course on each side. Two 18-hole courses on the property. The lobby is not a Las Vegas lobby, but the lake does come into the hotel lobby – boats and all. Sunday evening I attended the FileMaker Developer Conference keynote speech along with about 2,000 other geeks. We were pretty much in nerd heaven. Monday was spent attending FileMaker exhibits and going to lectures and things like that. Lots of cool nerd stuff. One thing I learned is that nerds don’t play golf. I guess they are too busy working, but I did have to try out some of the Desert Springs golf. I rented some clubs and played with a couple of other fellows (they were there to play golf, not go to the conference). Each hole on the course was more beautiful than the one before with a gorgeous mountain backdrop. I was playing in my sneakers and got my feet wet early in the round. By the end of the day I had some killer blisters! The place was very nice and would be great for a vacation any time of year. It was hot in the day, but I remember sitting out near the pool area one evening and they had a fire pit to prop your feet on. The warmth feels good in the cool mountain air. Theres a nice restaurant inside the hotel (a few of them I think) and other restaurants in town. The hotel employees were very friendly and I had a great time. Wednesday morning, we left for Las Vegas. After we got back on I-10 we saw a sign for the Joshua Tree National Monument. I had always wondered what that was, so we took the exit. I didn’t realize that we had to drive 20 or 30 miles to Twentynine Palms, but we did where we came to the park entrance. The loop thru the park is about 25 miles in length and all it is is a rock desert just like you would see in a western movie. It’s a very nice drive and you get to see some HUGE rocks. We stopped and climbed up on some. For some reason, I didn’t take any pictures and I wish I had. There are lots of those huge joshua trees too. It’s something you ought to do if you ever get out that way. Here is a map of the route we took. After we exited the park, we found a Pizza Hut to eat lunch at. We were trying to decide which way we would go to get back to Las Vegas. Going back to the interstate was quite a drive, so we thought we would take the park rangers advice and drive thru the Mojave Desert. It should be called the Mojave Nothing, because there is about 100 miles of nothing between Twentynine Palms and Baker, Ca where you get on I-15 to go to Las Vegas. It is however a very interesting drive. Some stretches you can see for about 10 miles in each direction down a long lonely road and no cars coming or going. For some reason I just really enjoyed that drive. You can do a lot of thinking driving thru the desert. Mostly you think about how up the creek you would be if your car broke down. (continue to Las Vegas - remainder of trip 7)