Tahquitz Canyon hike and Museum hike

On Friday morning, we drove into Palm Springs to the Tahquitz Canyon area for a short hike to a waterfall. It was gorgeous -- perfect weather.

By 11, we were back in the main shopping area, where the menfolk got themselves a prime spot at Stout Burger bar to watch the US vs England World Cup soccer game. The ladies had poke next door and then did some shopping.

In the late afternoon, we decided to tackle the behind the museum hike -- starts behind the Art Museum in town and literally goes straight up. You can keep going forever, up to 10,000 feet and the top of Mt. San Jacinto. But we just went up a mile, to an overlook, where some enterprising character had lugged a pull-up bar and some free weights.

Seb, doing his best presentation of Simba to the world.

 

A trio of mountain goats crossing the hillside behind us! I was so thrilled.

Thanksgiving 2022

We spent Thanksgiving Day at our rental house -- Kim and I cooked, the girls played in the pool and hot tub, the boys watched World Cup soccer and played ping pong (and cleaned up!). Over the week, we watched a spate of older classic movies - Men in Black, Ocean's 11 - and that was fun.

No rolling pin, so we improvised to roll out our pies. Kim made a chicken pot pie and I made an apple crumble pie. There were also no measuring cups or spoons, so we had to eyeball all the measurements for crust and filling as well. Everything turned out!

There was a mini pingpong table in the garage and we had a lot of fun playing on it -- Seb played me, Steve, and Carl, Carl and I played, and Liesl and Roxy goofed around. There weren't pingpong paddles, but these small plastic frisbees served admirably.

 

Someone won, and someone did not.

My boys did some shopping in Palm Springs and got dressed up in fancy clothes for the occasion. Matching plaid pants!!

Tri-tip steak, green beans, rolls, mashed potatoes with gravy, chicken pot pie, cranberry sauce, some raw veggies, and an apple pie. Pretty good spread for Thanksgiving on the road.

scrambling/hiking at JTree

On Wednesday we returned to Joshua Tree for some scrambling/bouldering/hiking in a different area, around Hidden Valley. It took us three hours to complete a mile-long loop, because we were climbing up and around so many rock formations. Everyone had so much fun.

 

Steve took the four kids to Palm Springs at this point, to eat gelato and do some shopping, but Carl, Kim and I stayed behind to explore the Chasm of Doom, the imaginatively named scramble through the mountain. There were places where you had to lie on your stomach and wriggle through rock, places where you had to drop over an overhang, and places where you had to stem on the walls to climb up. It was amazingly cool.

We met up in Palm Springs for dinner at Trio, which was delicious and also really funny because the waiter kept teasing Seb. He asked for a burger without onions and tomato, and the waiter asked if Seb just wanted a lettuce sandwich. And then brought him a plate of just lettuce! We were laughing so much.