Gave Living Desert a try on a cooler morning and it worked out. More of the animals out and about. Also was a much cooler day for the human visitors. As such, it was more crowded than we have experienced, but still very relaxing and far from over-crowded. It was fun because there were a lot of younger kids there with parents and grandparents enjoying all of the animals.
Staying with tradition, Joni found us the number 4 rated restaurant in Palm Desert for lunch after we got 7000+ steps in at the zoo. Kitchen 86 on El Paseo was very good, the service was above average, and Joni said the cocktail was great!
Posted inTravel and Scenery|Comments Off on Living Desert Part Deux – November 15, 2022
Our first hike without Larry and Joy. A short, relatively flat 2 miler up Palm Canyon located in the Agua Caliente Canyon Parks area just south of Palm Springs. Great geology! Great Scenery! Great palms everywhere. Met some interesting people. A couple from Switzerland was enjoying the last few days of their visit and we ran into a group called Road Scholars which I am going to have to do a little research on.
After hike found a great hamburger place and rewarded our 8,600+ steps toward protecting ourselves from Alzheimer’s.
Another adventure! Great visit to Living Desert with Joy and Larry. A very educational and peaceful must see in the Palm Desert area. Did crack into the lower 90’s as the day wore on so the exhibits and observers both slowed down. However, in true adventure fashion, we ended the day with a stop at the Coachella Brewing Co. and then dinner at Bubbas Bones and Brew. Turns out if you put mac and cheese on top of a hamburger with barbecue sauce you have a winner!
Posted inTravel and Scenery|Comments Off on The Living Desert – October 19, 2020
Another great adventure with Joy and Larry. Have to thank them for motivating us to explore the area. Had not been on the Tram for at least 35 years. Wow – Wow – Wow. It had everything for an adventure — a little cold, a little hungry and a little scared – especially swinging at the five towers. Plus geology immersion.
Beautiful hike at the top along the Desert View and Wildlife trails. Not used to being at 8,400 feet. An excellent downhill start from the Tram station which turned into a leg burning, lung exploding climb at the end of the day to a delicious picnic dinner on the west outlook.
All in all a GREAT ADVENTURE!!
Posted inGeology, Travel and Scenery|Comments Off on Palm Springs Tram – San Jacinto State Park – October 17, 2022
A great visit to PSAM with Joy and Larry. Museum suggested that 2-hours would be good. We spent almost two hours in one of four hangers. What a great find….
Posted inTravel and Scenery|Comments Off on Palm Springs Air Museum (PSAM) October 15, 2022
After 43 years as a consulting hydrogeologist, it dawned on me that I had/have lost touch with geology.
I had the extreme good fortune to have had both an excellent primary education in the Catholic schools and then in (of all places) the Newburgh, NY public school system. There was one high school for the greater Newburgh area, Newburgh Free Academy (NFA). I think that this allowed the powers in charge to concentrate funding there. When I started my sophomore year there was a relatively new addition to the hallowed halls of NFA that among other things housed the science and math departments including a planetarium. While drawn to astronomy, the guy that taught it was a smoker and I had enough of that at home ( in the early ’70s most teachers that were smokers did so in class also — particularly social studies teachers — but I digress). I took earth science with Jeff Callister in my sophomore year and that hit a note with me. Jeff was the penultimate high school teacher, young, enthusiastic, smart, a great instructor and just an all around nice guy. He convinced me to take his geology class when I was a junior and I was hooked. One of his previous students had gone on to the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and because I was pretty geeky and had been exposed to a lot of mining and engineering growing up, he suggested that as a destination.
Out of CSM and into the work-a-day world, I had the good fortune to become involved with several hydrogeology and engineering geology projects that were largely driven by geologic observations and interpretations. As time went on and economy and other demands moved me more into environmental applications of hydrogeology, I migrated into techno-geek applications. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that! For me, computers and their application to solving real world problems were intoxicating. Without even realizing it, I became less of a “geologist” and more of a “technologist”. That was with living in California, which is certainly one of the primary centers of geologic diversity in the world. Sometime in 2017 or 2018, I heard or noticed the term exotic terranes in a geology article or podcast. Other than being offended by what appeared to be a wild spelling error and then being intrigued by the “exotic” modifier (geologists can be a little base) I was curious. In researching a little I became fascinated by this whole concept. Remember that in the 1973-1978 period at CSM, plate tectonics as a serious theory was relatively young after a very slow start in gaining general acceptance among the geologic community.
Bringing me to today. I am now regularly devouring geology articles, podcasts and maps and driving to or modifying driving routes to see geologic features and even taking geologic themed photos. For me it is a very refreshing and rejuvenating experience and an homage to my high school years when I fell in love with geology.
