Palm Springs, a pool, and a tram

Last weekend was good. I took Friday off to just relax before my trip to Palm Springs, and turned it into a 4-day weekend. I drove out Saturday afternoon - a 4-hour monotonous drive west through the Sonoran desert. But, with an iPod full of tunes and XM-radio I was all set. One of the XM-stations (POTUS 08) replayed several of the speeches from the Democratic convention so I caught Al Gore's speech. Not bad at all. I think we're all wondering where this Al Gore was eight years ago.

Palm Springs is actually a bit of a misnomer for the area - there are a number of towns right there: Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Cathedral City, Indio, La Quinta, etc. Well, Mike and Angela's house was in La Quinta, in a beautiful private golf community, and the house was gorgeous. 4,500 square-feet (~400 square meters) with giant flat screen TVs everywhere, and a large Infinity-pool overlooking the 9th tee-box. See picture above.

So, how did I get to visit this incredible place? My former co-worker Mike Donofrio's wife works for a construction company that has a number of guest houses, and one of the employee benefits is that they get to book one of them for a week each year. In addition to me, it was Mike and Angela; his sister Christie and her 1-year old Maddie, and Angela's parents: Mr. and Mrs Boomhauer. Ok, not really, but Angela's dad sounded just like him even though they were from Virginia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomhauer

On Sunday, the rest of the crew drove down to San Diego, but I was more interested in exploring the area so I stayed back and checked out the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which is quite impressive. It takes you from ground level up through five different climate zones (desert to alpine) as it ascends to 8,500 ft (2,600 m) and the temperature dropped from 105 (40 Celsius) to 65 (18 Celsius) as we went up. The tram fits 30-40 people and has a rotating floor so you get to see every direction on the way up. Unfortunately, it was a partially overcast day so we through a cloud cover and couldn't see all the way up (or down), but once we got up above the clouds the weather was nice.

Oh, and each time we passed one of the towers (see picture on the right) the tram sped up for a second only to seemingly fall down for a fraction of a second on the other side, causing everyone to scream out loud. Exciting.

I also checked out downtown Palm Springs, which is quite nice, and had lunch at Tyler's which is supposedly the burger joint where the locals go. Very old school bar seating, a respectable cheeseburger, and a rack full of magazines - including the latest copy of The Atlantic Monthly. Hard to complain about that. And, as you may know, Palm Springs is very gay-friendly, so I thought this Marilyn-statue was fitting.

And, let's finish with a couple of evening pictures taken from the house in La Quinta.