Easter Flowers

When it comes to envisioning the desert many folks conjure up pictures of sand dunes and cactus. In actuality, the desert is many things, depending on exactly where you are in which desert.

Here in Southern California's Coachella Valley, the desert is made up of sand and rocks and lots of plants. There's creosote bush, mesquite, and lots of other stuff as well as smaller plants. There are even some sand dunes.

In years when mother nature is generous with her winter moisture the desert can become a beautiful carpet of flowers. As I reported in one of my recent posts, we drove more than 100 miles to Amboy, CA, to view the wildflowers blooming there. If we had only been a little more patient we could have seen much the same display right here in our backyard. The hills, normally brown, have turned light green and the desert floor is covered with a colorful carpet of blooming wildflowers.

The snow-capped mountain peak in the background of the photo above is majestic Mt. San Gorgonio, rising to 11,502' above sea level; the tallest peak in Southern California.

It's all so beautiful to see but heck on allergies.

I awoke at 3 am this morning unable to breathe through my nose. Because it is so warm in the daytime and mild at night we have taken to leaving the windows open opposite our bed. Not anymore! We'll try to keep those allergens outside where they belong.

Even the birds had their Easter Bonnets on as they paraded through the wildflowers. These Quail were at their finest.

Happy Easter

Celebrity Geocaching

In the heyday of the Hollywood movie studios, and film stars flocked to Palm Springs, California. Just a short distance from the studios lay a slightly out of the way place where luxurious resorts awaited their arrival. The common guy, Joe Six-pack, didn’t come here in any numbers thus allowing the privileged movie stars to live a fabulous lifestyle here on the desert, free from news reporters and cameras.

An example of such a resort is the Ingleside Inn. This luxury retreat began its life as the private residence of the family who owned the Pace Arrow Automobile Company. It was originally constructed in 1926 and covered more than 10 acres of land just a block off the main highway through the Palm Springs area. After deaths in the family, the home became a 10-room inn called by its present name. It had a major difference, however, from all other hotels. You didn’t call here for a reservation; the owner of the inn called and invited you. Anyone accepting the invitation was then charged for the privilege.

Virtually every famous name from the 1930’s through the present time have stayed here at Ingleside, including the current governor of California, Arnold Swartzenegger.

Even former President of the United States, Gerald Ford, was a guest.

A restaurant was created, originally only for guests and their guests (diners who were not registered guests had to be approved by the owner before they could enter a dining room.) Today, Melvyn’s restaurant caters to the well-heeled general public where the parking lot is populated with the likes of Bentley, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, and Maserati. A geocache celebrates the Inn from a real estate sign across the street.

Many of these stars built fabulous homes and estates here as winter homes. Since it is not uncommon for summertime temperatures in the Coachella Valley to rise to 120 degrees or more, many if not most of the Hollywood crowd only inhabited the valley during the fall, winter, and spring months. That job has now been taken over by the thousands of “Snow Birds” that flock here every fall to spend the winter in the relative warmth of the valley.

In the post WWII era, as building construction materials and techniques improved and refrigerated air conditioning came into its own, many of the notables built large homes and estates and some lived here year round. Today many of these fabulous homes can be seen on tour busses boarded in downtown Palm Springs.

For us, an enjoyable alternative is to see these places completely on our own as we follow the “celebrity geocache tour”.

Our first stop was at “Piazza Liberace”, a guy who loved Palm Springs so much he owned eight homes here at one time. He is quoted as saying, “Some people collect stamps, I collect real estate.” This particular home has a piano shaped swimming pool in back and hundreds of candelabra inside.

One cannot help but be struck by how different conditions are today. Here a performer as famous and popular as Liberace lived in a home on a regular street with the front door not 50 feet from the street. It wasn’t many years after this that many of the luminaries began retreating behind the closed doors and guard shacks of the country club communities that dot the local landscape. As fans and the news media became more aggressive they simply could not continue to live, more or less, as normal people.

One of the most well known local residents who came to stay and live year-round was Sonny Bono. After getting grief for remodeling and restoring his home, Sonny ran for Mayor of Palm Springs and won, thus proving again that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
He held that post for a few years before settling down for a few more. His final gig was as a U.S. Congressman for several years before his untimely death in a skiing accident. His wife Mary was given his seat and, while remarried, continues to occupy it today.

Sonny’s contribution to what Palm Springs is today is memorialized in this bronze statue of him downtown on Palm Canyon Drive. His most noticeable contribution is the lighted palm trees along Palm Canyon Drive. Sonny’s statue is also a “virtual geocache.”

Many of these estates are behind ornate gates and walls leaving you to wonder what lies inside or under the Spanish-tile roofs visible over them. Visiting them takes you through magnificent neighborhoods that offer peaks into many of these fabulous places, making the tour well worthwhile. As we drove slowly through these neighborhoods we repeatedly crossed paths with some of the commercial tour busses from downtown.

The homes of Jack Benny, Barry Manilow, Sonny Bono, Robert Wagner, are amongst those that cannot really be seen from the street. A home once owned by Elvis Presley (it’s uncertain if he ever actually lived in the house) is fully visible from the street.

For us the trip was more about locating some of the geocaches hidden around these homes and seeing all of the fabulous landscaping (in full bloom) in these neighborhoods. Even Mother Nature's garden is spectacular at the end of the residential streets.

Got the travel bug? Scooby Doo Do

Well, we bought a travel bug which, as I've previously mentioned, is a metal dog tag with a serial number engraved into it that you set off on some geocache adventure that you devise.

Since our blog is called "lookin4AMERICA" we decided to see if we could get one of these things to visit all 50 States before heading back for retirement in Grass Valley.

We bought a little toy Matchbox car and attached the dog tag to it and deposited it in one of the desert caches near our home RV resort. It only took a matter of hours before it disappeared and it was on its way for the first leg of its adventure. Actually it's still on its way but we have received the first news, it has been spotted in the snow in Littleton, CO, and where it is headed is unknown. The party that has it merely has said that it is "heading east." How far east is a mystery but we'll know the minute it is logged into a geocache somewhere else.

We also have another one in our bag at the present time that we picked up the other day. It began its journey last August on the North Island of New Zealand. It's a little tennis shoe and it's called, "Just Sneakin'" We'll move it on in the next few days.

What's in a name, "It's a mere matter of words," you say. It's more than that.

“A Rose by any other name,” may smell as sweet (but wait, have you smelled the roses from your local florist lately, they don’t smell at all—allergies and lawsuits you understand). I am occasionally bewildered by the names we give to some of the products we purchase.

There was a time when most automobiles for example, were named after things that go fast—Meteor—Galaxy—Rocket 88--Terraplane, or animals that do the same—Cougar, Mustang, Honey Bee, Roadrunner, Impala, or Stingray. Some had fast names but weren't fast--the Pacer, Pinto (In all fairness, the Pinto may have been named after the gassy legume and not the horse), Gremlin--were just a few. Today they have combinations of numbers and letters that have absolutely no meaning—XR5, Z71, E350, MKZ.

What the heck is a Sephia, Camry, TaTa, or Vectra? Then there's the Inspire? As a Country Coach brand motorhome it's quite successful. Apparently it didn't inspire as the Aspire, a Ford Sub-Compact car, however, as it wasn't around long. Then there was the popular Fiesta. We're lead to believe it's coming back in a new iteration.

Nissan markets a monster called the Armada. Though there have been a number of armadas, the biggest of note was Spanish and was sunk by the Brits hundreds of years ago. Hardly a goal to be emulated.


Some of the strangest and funniest are found in the names of trucks and Recreational Vehicles. Ford previewed a concept truck called the Super Chief—for those of you who are too young to remember, the Super Chief was a Santa Fe Railroad passenger train running for the right to the left coast of the country.
That’s right, a TRAIN. I suppose trains are powerful but the Super Chief was known more for luxury. I don’t get the connection between a luxo train and a Super Duty pickup truck.

Some of the really strangest (and painfully inappropriate) is the current spate of vehicles named after NATURAL DISASTERS. Chevrolet markets a pickup truck called an Avalanche—an unpleasant thought considering the number of outdoorsmen who have been killed in the real thing this winter at our ski resorts.

Why in the world would you name a vehicle after a natural disaster?

Well, it gets worse and I hope you'll agree with me in asking, "What were they thinking? There is a recreational vehicle—a motorhome—called a TSUNAMI. After seeing the news coverage of the devastating tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean a few years ago that resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people would you be inspired to put your hard-earned bucks down on something celebrating a horrendous natural disaster?

Don't stop now, how about heading out for your vacation in a HURRICANE—not Katrina, or Camille, or Andrew, but your new motorhome. Now you understand why I wonder what goes through the minds of those who decide what to call things.. I haven’t seen a Tornado—even General Motors shuffled some letters when it named the Torenado—and I never knew what that meant either. I have seen lots of RV’s named Storm however. Again, another natural event I’d rather avoid than seek out.

Even just as strange but with less emotional impact are the RV’s names Rustler, Intruder, Renegade, Prowler, or BOUNDER. I always wonder if the latter refers to how that particular coach rides as it goes down the road. I conjure up visions of people bouncing off the ceiling as it BOUNDS down the highway. Rustlers, Intruders, Renegades, and Prowlers are not nice things. What about a Challenger? None of these has ever been considered forces for good in any community, but people continue to buy and use them.

I lay in my bed slowly waking one morning. It was obvious that sun had already risen because the window shade on the window next to my bed was bright with light. I reached up and opened the shade giving me a good view outside. Across the street from our motorhome a 5th wheel trailer was parked and, emblazoned in huge letters across the front of it was the word EVEREST. Now if that doesn’t conjure up a picture of a coffin factory in your mind, your sense of humor is certainly different from mine. “Goodbye cruel world, I’m getting into my Ever Rest now. What were they thinking? Now it’s clear they had the big mountain in Tibet in mind but even that causes me to wonder about its relevance. What does a big mountain have to do with a recreational vehicle?

Then there’s the Condor. Have you ever seen a living Condor? You want to talk about magnificent ugliness you need to talk about a Condor. They are the highly endangered scavengers—like vultures—that live primarily in the hills of California’s Central Coast and other mountainous areas of the world.

Now that's just a partial tour down silly (and outright outrageous) name lane but it highlights some of the stranger and funnier ones that are out there. If you know of others, snap a picture and send it to me in an email and I'll add it to this posting. In the meantime, I hope you got a chuckle out of what's here, at least.