We made it back safe and sound from our vacation to Palm Desert, CA last week. We arrived there on Saturday, 6/14 around 11am (after waking up at 3:45 to start the traveling). We checked into our 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 1.5 kitchen villa at the Marriott Shadow Ridge in Palm Desert. The room was amazing and the view was beautiful overlooking the golf course and the mountains. The kids loved swimming in the large pools everyday and also liked the water slide. Unfortunately due to the extreme heat we had to spend most of the time in the shade- or even in the hotel room during the afternoon when it was up to 115 degrees! We went on the Palm Springs Aerial Tram ride on Sunday (Father's Day) and spent the day hiking and Geocaching on top of the mountains in the 75 degree weather which was just perfect! Later in the week we went to the Living Desert where the boys fed a giraffe and we saw many other unique animals from Africa and the U.S.. We did some additional geocaching around the Palm Desert area which was fun for all of us. We even took a drive up to Joshua National Park thinking it would be cooler up in those mountains but it was still about 100 degrees there so we didn't do any hiking that day. Instead we drove to the Salton Sea which we thought would be a beautiful beach option for swimming. HA! That was a joke. Take our word for it- DO NOT EVER VISIT THE ROTTEN SALTON SEA. The place smells like 50 year old eggs! Very pretty from afar though. Thursday night we went to Downtown Palm Springs for the street festival which was a lot of fun. It's amazing how crowded the area was for their "off" season. On our final night we drove up to the Vista Point look out in the mountains which was so beautiful. Morgan and I were gripping our seats on the thin curvy road up the mountain but we made it and I am glad we did. The view was priceless! After that we took the kids to Boomers- a massive mini golf place which they of course loved! We were very lucky at how well all three kids handled the trip and the heat. They even did well on the flights and that was asking a lot considering the puddle jumper in and out of Palm Springs was frightening to say the least. I can honestly say I have never experienced turbulence that bad- and for 30 minutes straight! Poor Carson was getting sick from it but thank goodness he never threw up. It was close though!
All in all we had a great time as a family. Palm Desert is a beautiful area and it seems to be continuing to grow. We highly recommend visiting............ just not in June!
Click on the montage to see the pictures. There are a ton- but I already cut out about half. Enjoy!
You can also try to click on this link for the same photos in an album format.
Palm Desert, CA Vacation June 2008
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