Road Trip - Day Twelve

We started our day in Palm Springs by swimming in the hotels heated pool and spending some time in the Jacuzzi. We then went up on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. This tram has the world’s largest rotating cars. The floor of the tram slowly revolves so that everyone gets a 360 degree view. As many as 80 individuals can ride up the mountain at one time. The trip takes 10 minutes and we went two and one half miles up to the top of Mt. San Jacinto State Park. We went from 2,643 feet at the base of the mountain to 8,516 feet at the top. San Jacinto is a 14,000 acre park with more than 54 miles of hiking trails. The temperature was quite different at the top (40 degrees) than the base (62 degrees). We took a walk in the woods which was quite beautiful. There was hard packed snow on the ground and the sky was blue with not a cloud to be seen. It was very enjoyable. We then watched a video on how the tram was constructed. It was quite an amazing engineering feat. After lunch at the restaurant which looked out over the valley and Palm Spring below, we drove around Palm Springs. We really enjoyed this city which has 350 days of sunshine a year. We left around 1:00 p.m. and arrived in Santa Monica around 3:30 p.m. The LA freeways were very busy. Again Jill (our GPS) was a great navigator. This was a short driving day. We checked into our hotel and then went down to the beach. We were able to ride our bikes along the boardwalk until after sunset. The boardwalk and pier area is quite a mix to individuals from all walks of life. You can see most anything. After our ride we walked to the Third Street Promenade. This is a several block long collection of stores and restaurants where the street traffic has been eliminated. There were multiple groups of street performers which made for quite an entertaining evening.

I have posted pictures of our trip on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway at http://picasaweb.google.com/tschick62/PalmSprings?feat=directlink

More later . . .