Only in California

As most of you know, I spent 14 years of my life in Southern California and a majority of that time was spent near the sunny beaches and a small fraction in the Mojave Desert. The time near the beach was awesome because of....THE BEACH and the time spent in the desert were some of the most peaceful years I can remember.

Nothing can compare to waking up at 5am and hearing nothing but the wind blowing and a pack coyotes howling to confuse its prey. From my house in Yucca Valley, I could see the snow capped mountains of San Jacento and Big Bear, the rock formations in the Joshua Tree National Monument and thousands of Joshua Trees stretching their branches to the sky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to have my company send me and small contingent of consultants to California to meet one of our clients. The client was located smack dab in the middle of both places I mentioned above. I was fortunate that the people who travelled with me were tolerant and ok with me taking them on a trip down memory lane. :-) We spent one evening watching the sunset from the pier in San Clemente, enjoying the lights of the boats in Dana Point Harbor and driving up the coast to Laguna Beach. We spent another evening driving to the Mojave Desert and stopping at all the "interesting" spots along the way. The goal of this trip was to stop at a restaurant I used to frequent in 29 Palms (If it was still there).

The first stop on our trip took us to a landmark that was made famous by Pee Wee Herman from his first movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure". There are two life size dinosaurs at a truck stop that one can stop and take pictures with and for $10 take a trip into the body of the T-Rex. None of us were that into it, so we settled for a few pictures and were on our way. Our next stop was the windmill farm.

It was very windy

Relaxing on the feet of T-Rex

Michael and T-Rex

There is an area by Palm Springs were a couple of mountains come together and wind is forced through a small area between the mountains. The wind constantly blows in this area and over the years, people has put up wind mills to the wind and turn it into energy. It is pretty cool to see the miles and miles of wind mills on the desert floor spinning in circles. Once we had our fill of watching the spinny objects, we headed for the high desert.

Miles and miles of windmills

For the next 40 minutes we drove up hill to the place where the Joshua Tree grows. We entered the Joshua Tree National Monument and drove for the next hour or stopping and taking pictures when the mood struck us.

Can you hear it? NO NOISE :-)
Sal, Bill, Erin and Michael under a Joshua Tree

Rock formation in Joshua Tree Park

Sal conquers the formation
A dam in the middle of the desertYou can see the water mark on the rocks A view from the top of the dam. There is a little water

In case you were thinking about taking a dip

Desert cactus in bloom
Incredible landscape

As the sun set, we made our way to 29 Palms and to find an old restaurant where I used to eat BBQ. Even though the BBQ was nothing like Kansas City BBQ, I enjoyed sitting in this familiar place. We finished up our meals and started on our trek home. We crammed a week of Southern California site seeing into two 3 hour day trips. :-)

May all your trips be as memorable as mine.

Bill