Palm Springs, CA - Memory Tricks

Prayer of the tired hiker:

        ‘If you pick them up, oh Lord,

        I’ll put them down.’

We’ve spent two days in the RV, Gary was working on some maintenance and I was spending bundles of money - making reservations for campgrounds and adventures in Alaska for this summer. Let’s stop this fixin’ and spendin’ - let’s get out of the RV for some hikin.’ Let’s have some fun. How about the Araby Hike? You know, the one that climbs a hill behind Bob Hope’s Palm Springs home for an awesome view of the home and Palm Springs? We did it 5 years ago, remember? Wasn’t it fun? Let’s do it again.

Isn’t memory wonderful? Often you forget all the bad things in the past and remember the good. I remembered the views, the many spur trails, the choices of where to go after the Araby trail, sitting at the top with some other hikers just looking out over the valley. Cool.

I forgot how steep this hike was.

I forgot how long this hike was.

I forgot that all the spur trails involved lots more climbing and descending - more work.

I didn’t remember the temperature, but today it was 88 degrees.

Ugh. This is our third major hike this week. Even in Mesa when we were in hiking shape we didn’t hike 3 times in one week. What kind of fools are we? My legs and my lungs weren’t ready for this rigorous a hike today. Not my best effort.

We hiked only 5.93 miles BUT we got 1562’ in that 5 miles. At times we were climbing at a 19.2% grade. A stair stepper of a hike. I had forgotten all that. Oof - da.

Saw this little fellow on our way to the trail head.

As we climbed our views expanded. Here is a view of Palm Springs with the circular black-roofed Bob Hope home in the foreground.

Higher up the hills the views were as spectacular as before. We could see the peak of Mt. San Jacinto on the left and Gregornio off in the distance across the valley.

We could see across Palm Springs to the sand dunes across the valley and the mountains of Joshua Tree National Park.

We found this rock man - looks like someone had lots of time on their hands.

Wasn’t hard to see this trail marking cairn.

We could look across the wash and see the switchbacks we had just come down. BTW - we were climbing up the same switchbacks on this side of the wash.

Coming off the trail we walked by this beautiful floral display. It’s spring in the Coachella Valley.

Back at the car we were sweaty, my skin had little flecks of sand on it, my hair was matted to my head and I had sand between my toes. We had a congratulatory kiss and we both thought we were deer at a salt lick. Yecch. Salty lips. Cripes, we got 85% of our daily salt requirements in that one kiss.

Would I do the hike again? Sure, give me another 5 years.