Someday, if you want fun, take the long way from Palm
Springs to Las Vegas. If you go in the
spring, you will see amazing wildflowers – if you go any other time you will
see a different world than you get otherwise.
Part One Palm Springs to Twenty-Nine Palms
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| An Alexander Home in Palm Springs |
This section will show you all the desert has to offer in
all kinds of ways. You start in Palm
Springs and drive up through some lovely homes.
At the top end of Palm Springs you can see the “Alexander” homes have
come to typify the best of 1960s design.
Then you head up towards the towns of Joshua Tree and Twenty-Nine Palms.
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| The Alexander Back Yard |
And “up” is the right word.
There is a big include in the Morongo Canyon, and the road rises up
it. This is the very visible and obvious
dividing line between the “low desert” and the “high desert”. The low desert is
the Colorado (the US portion of the Sonoran Desert), which includes Palm
Springs and the resort towns. Here,
winter temperatures rarely fall below freezing and elevations are near sea
level. After the rise, you are in the Mojave
desert which has much colder winters and freezing temperatures, while not
common, are not the rare sight they are at lower elevations.
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| The Incline up from Morongo Valley |
The incline is one of the very few visible dividing
lines. In most cases, there is a
mountain range (running from the San Gabriels in the Los Angeles Basin through
the Joshua Tree mountain ranges) dividing the High Desert from the Low
Desert. And since you exit from the
mountains ‘down” to the desert floor, you don’t realize that difference in
elevations and ecosystems. The high
desert is much more diverse ecologically – but you don’t really notice because
the Palm Springs area low desert has almost no native vegetation left.
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You will also notice a difference in the type of homes. Palm Springs is pretty upscale in most of
it’s residences. As you move up to the
High Desert you will notice that the price of homes and property decreases as
the distance to Palm Springs increase and the weather drops. The community of Joshua Tree that lies off
the highway and in the foothills is a bit of an exception to this. It is a bohemian community of artists and
there are quite a few expensive and dramatic homes. But you barely see them.
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| Artsy PreFabs in Joshua Tree's hipster area |
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Twenty-nine Palms itself is a military town (there is a huge
Marine Airbase here) and the town is dominated by active duty and retired
military. It is the gateway to Joshua
Tree National Park as well, and so there is a very transient population.
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| Not so Artsy Twenty-Nine Palms |
tomorrow Twenty Nine Palms to Amboy