Upon leaving 29 Palms, we ran into snow on the ground at Yucca Valley and were very glad to be going downhill into Palm Springs and Indio. We have had a very relaxing time since 29 Palms. Marty has gotten his racket fixed in the tennis capital of the USA at Indian Wells. This is a beautiful facility with seating for 16,000 and 20 courts. They only wanted $20 per day per person to play. We just got the racket fixed and played in the local free courts. But they gave us our own private tour. Showed us the semi-private box seats with their own private dining facilities and a tour of the men’s change room and the champions’ locker area with all of the champions’ names engraved onto the lockers. It was very interesting and the courts are all below ground level and so have easy wheel chair access for the tournaments.
While waiting for the racket to be fixed we stayed at Lake Cahuilla County Park and there really is a lake. We have seen major birds over the past week and this blog is going to be mostly the birds as we have not done any major hikes. The hosts at Cahuilla had out hummingbird feeders who allowed us to photograph the hummingbirds for awhile. The Vermillion Flycatcher has now been identified and it originally showed itself to us at the Tennis Garden and then again later on at McIntyre County Park.
We by-passed staying in the south end of Joshua Tree Nat. Park due to elevation and cold temperatures again. But we did do one short hike prior to leaving the park. We went onto Blythe and found the county park on the Colorado River. Did another short mile hike along the levy. This is where we saw the Vermillion Flycatcher, a downy woodpecker, red wing blackbirds, grey gnat catcher, and a loggerhead shrike.
We have moved on into Quartzite and have met up with Val. Will be leaving here in a few days to go into Yuma area at Mitry Lake to meet up with Tim and Jackie for Christmas. Val has taken me a bike ride through town and we have stopped and shopped at all the Flea Market Vendors. Apparently there are only a few right now and a whole hoard of vendors will be town for the Gem and Rock show starting in January. Thousands and thousands of RV’ers will be in town for the show. Not sure if we will be among them.
