Another day, another patio breakfast as they say...well at least in palm springs. Today was a little bit wild and windy, still sunny and fine though.
We took in the last of our hotel experience here at the Horizon, and checked out. We headed into town for one last gander at the puppy clothing store for sim, she nearly bought Duster a little bad ass Harley davidson hat.
We then drove down to the visitors centre before heading up to the aerial tramway station. The station was really cool, at the base of the San Jacinto mountains, the revolving cable cars took you from sunny desert oasis to snowy, windy alpine areas in less than 10mins. CRAZY! I didn't know that this existed in Palm Springs. So diverse.
The actual tramway station was cool too, designed by architect Albert Frey, it was an expressive steel structure bridging over a creek.
The ride up to the top was pretty spectacular. It was a shame that it was such a windy day, as the desert sand was blown up making long distance visibility poor. Still you could see the diversity of climates all in front of you, desert, palm tree oasis, rocky mountains and snowy rock outcrops.
When we got to the top we nearly froze. We brought our north face wind jackets and beanies too, but the howling wind was ridiculous. What was more ridiculous however was that some people were still wearing shorts and thongs, crazy! That's normally me too, but not here this is freezing.
We headed back down, afraid to really venture out into the freezing alpine conditions. When we got to the bottom we thawed out and headed for the Indian Canyons. When we got to the visitor centre tho, we found out it was gonna cost us each $12.50 to trek the 1hr hike, so we decided against it. Instead we did what every American would do, we headed to a burger joint. Fatburger in fact, it's actually really really good. On par with In-N-Out Burger I reckon. I love these burgers, really yummy, kinda like homemade only better. I don't know how McDonalds competes with these two for flavour. They're really good.
It was now time to say bye bye to Palm Springs, so we drove out by the airport (one of the coolest I've seen may I add), past the famous Gas Station cone Info Center, past the windy corner and into the desert on our way to LA.
The wind however was ferocious, was nuts driving on the freeway. Never driven in conditions like that. Sand was sweeping across the valley, it was like a blizzard. The car was actually being pushed by the wind it was that strong.
We finally got past it and were on the freeways to LA. We started to hit traffic and crazy freeways before not too long. We then got our first glimpse of LA downtown and the hills. The expansiveness of this place is phenomenal. It's so sprawling. Crazy! It took us about an hour to go 20miles - welcome to Los Angeles.
By 4:30ish we were at The Holiday inn at Venice Beach. We drove to the beach, as it's still not close enough to walk, and strolled along the beach at sunset. The pier is pretty awesome. Once again we were reminded if Forrest Gump and his running, he seems to be a recurring theme. The pier is such a famous old structure. Was really nice watching the sun go down over the Pacific, closer to home now than we've been for a while. The colours here were beautiful. Kinds like a postcard really.
Dinner was ok, Italian at a small place off the Venice Pier strip. It's pretty quiet here. Not what I was expecting.
- Blog from iMat
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