Holiday to the Pacific West Coast in Aug 2006: Day 14 – Oxnard to Palm Springs

Slept ok last night.  Didn’t wake until about 8am again.  Although we have over 150 miles to do, it was all by Interstate so wasn’t a problem.

Wow what a change in the weather!  We woke in the 70s in Oxnard and ended up in Palm Springs in the 100s.  We had the top down all the way and we soon started to warm up!

Headed around LA, but on the way we stopped off at Hollywood (as you do), since it was so close.  We got our couple of photos of the Hollywood sign and then we were off again.  Nice place, very clean, houses are huge, sort-of Mediterranean style, bet the prices are high!

We stopped off at Arcadia for coffee, which is only about 20 miles from Palm Springs.  The nice lady in the coffee shop asked if we knew the Queen so we said we’d remember her to the Queen next time we saw her.

Arrived in Palm Springs at about 1pm where we had lunch at The Village Pub – it’s got it’s own live web cam feed on the Internet (www.PalmSpringsVillagePub.com).  Lunch was ok – nothing much to write home about though.

Palm Springs is a wonderful place, set in a very flat valley and surrounded by dramatic mountains.  You can see how it’s a weekend resort for the rich folk in LA.  The downtown area is full of chic bars and restaurants and trendy shops. We finally arrived in Rancho Mirage which is almost connected with Palm Springs at about 4pm at which point we tuned in to see Federer beat Roddick.  Shame – we really wanted Roddick to win.  However we got our second upgrade of our holiday to a suite, so thanks Mr Hilton.

Hotel is excellent – very clean and functional, and what’s best is that there is a Cheesecake Factory just 5 mins walk down the road!  I wonder where we went for dinner?

But before dinner we had time to visit the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.  This is the world’s highest revolving tramway – yes, the pods revolve as the cable car (it’s not really a ‘tram’) ascends the mountain, a weird feeling.

At the top the views, as you would expect, are awesome.  We wished we had more time to spend there, as they have a lot of hiking trails from the mountain which look really good.

Would love to come back to Palm Springs one day!

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