We took these days off just to give us a break. Short bike rides, a little poolside relaxing and lots of reading in the sun.
Wednesday the 12th
Today it's warmed up again so we decided to drive to Palm Springs and ride up the tram. It's a surprisingly short drive - north out of Hemet to I-10, east on I-10 to CA-111, then south to Palm Springs making the turn onto Tramway Blvd for the three mile drive up a private road into the San Jacinto mountains.We got to the tram parking lot about 11:40 AM and walked up to the Valley Station. The Palm Springs Tramway (http://www.pstramway.com/) was completed in 1963 after two plus years of construction. Initially conceived in 1935, the idea took 15 years to really gain traction, then another 10 years for design, engineering and fund raising. Completed at a cost of $8.5M no public money was spent on the project. In 2000, there was a major upgrade to the cable cars as the worlds first revolving trams were installed.
After purchasing our tickets we spent 5 minutes in the tram waiting area and another 5 in the loading area. While our tram came down the mountain and neared the loading platform people were furiously snapping pictures. Tina seemed very relaxed as we boarded the tram for the ride up to the Mountain station. As soon as the doors closed our operator made several safety announcements and noted that there would be some swaying as we passed over the five lift towers along the way.Pulling out of the station the floor immediately started to rotate while the walls and windows remained stationary. Fortunately there were small grab rails around the inside of the tram so we could steady ourselves during the ride. As the tram wheels passed over tower one the tram set to swinging pretty good and everybody was surprised, especially those taking pictures when it happened. By the time we hit the third tower everybody was pretty relaxed about the swinging, even Tina.
The Valley Station is at 2,643 feet elevation and the mountain station is at 8,629 feet elevation, a 6,000 foot change. The temperature when we left the Valley Station was about 80 degrees. At the Mountain Station we had dropped about 30 degrees. The distance traveled up the mountainside is only 12,708 feet, a little over two miles and takes only ten minutes with the tram rotating once every five minutes.
On reaching the Mountain Station we decided to have lunch while it warmed up a bit so we walked to the upper level to the "Peaks" Restaurant where we had a great view of the valley out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The restaurant is really very nice and there were about ten other tables on our seating level. Tina had the special, Tri Tip with mashed potatoes, gravy and vegetables while I ordered the special Angus burger with avocado, bacon, cheese, tomato and a jalapeno spread. Both lunches came with a huge house salad of mixed greens. The salads were excellent as were our entrees. To have a really nice lunch in such a beautiful setting was a real treat!
After lunch we made our way outside and following a winding path down to the floor of Long Valley where we set off on a two mile hike along the perimeter of the valley. Part of the trail was called Desert View because we had great views down to the desert valley. By now it had warmed up a couple of degrees and it was easy to hike in comfort. EXCEPT for the elevation. At almost 9,000 feet up the air is thinner and when you exert yourself going up hill your heart begins to hammer in your chest as it cries for oxygen.Even though we have been bike riding and going for walks, neither of us are in really good shape so we felt the exertion but we weren't in any hurry so we took our time, admiring the views, watching the birds, listening to the sound of melt water running into Long Valley Creek and marveling at the size of the pine trees and the amount of snow still on the ground. Reaching the end of the loop we made our way back up the paved trail to the Mountain Station and visited the gift shop.
Soon we could catch a ride back down the mountain to the Valley Station. Arriving at our starting point we walked around outside and took some pictures of flowers, mountain sheep and Lady bugs before we made our way down to the car for the drive home.Arriving back at the coach an hour later we took the kids for a long walk, downloaded our pictures to the computer then made our way over to the clubhouse for dinner. Tonight we had meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls and vegetables along with coffee and a vanilla/banana custard for desert - all for $6 each. And just like last Wednesday it was really good. So we spent an hour over dinner visiting and having a nice time.
The rest of the evening we spent relaxing with TV and our books.
To see all our photos, click on:
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