Vacation Time - Day 0 and Day 1

 Day 0 - Travel

I decided to go on vacation with my mom the day after graduating from war college.  While overall this was a good idea, choosing a 06:00AM flight to head out to San Diego and Palm Springs not such a great an idea.  The graduation day was long and tiring, and then getting up at 02:30AM the next day makes for a long tiring day of travel.   I have been feeling tired all day.

The flight from DC to Atlanta then to San Diego was decent, fairly smooth which was nice.  I got my mom and I first class seats, due to the free companion fare, my husband had on Delta. The sad thing is Delta changed some things, so a first class ticket no longer gets you into the lounge, you have to be on an international first class ticket to get into the lounge now or have a Delta Amex Card.  At least we got a real breakfast on the flight from Atlanta to San Diego.

Once in San Diego, we picked up the rental car which was upgraded to a Jaguar SUV from a standard economy because they were out of economy cars. We headed out to Palm Springs which was about a 3 hour drive not including the stop we made at In-N-Out Burger for a late lunch.  We are staying at a Westin Resort property. It is more designed for an extended stay and families. The rooms are decent, and it has two pools.    Because they don’t do breakfast in the morning, we went up to the Super Walmart to pick up some breakfast food, snacks, and water.  Overall, we didn’t do much outside of driving today.  Tomorrow we will be going up the Airial Tram to do some hiking up in the mountain area, then the next day we will go to Joshua Tree as that will be a very early morning excursion to beat the heat.

Day 1 – Aerial Tram

Today I got up a little after 06:00AM, even though my alarm was set for 07:00AM, because I just couldn’t sleep anymore.  Still on east coast time. I ate breakfast, which was a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich, because the resort doesn’t have breakfast.  I keep thinking I should have picked the other hotel, but this is the first time staying at a Weston Vacation Resort and I was expecting it to be like a lot of the other Marriot properties I stay at.  Unfortunately, since Weston was just recently bought, they aren’t up to the same standards yet.     But I digress.   After breakfast I got all my things ready for the day and Mom and I were out the door by 08:00AM to head over to the tram. 

It is about a 20-minute drive to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which is also the only round spinning tram in the U.S.  These types of trams are apparently popular in Switzerland.  We got our tickets and took the 15-minute ride to the top of the mountain, which put us at an altitude near 9,000ft.  We then did the 1.5 mile Desert View trail, which took us past 5 overlooks, where you can see the valley below and Palm Springs.   By the time we were done with the hike and back to the Tram Station it was near lunch, so we grabbed lunch at the tram station.  They have two eateries and a bar at the tram station, the first eatery is a small cafeteria style place, and the second is a sit down restaurant with lunch starting at $25 per plate.  We chose the small cafeteria style place and split some chicken fingers and fries.  While it was a lot cooler up the mountain than down in the valley it was still hot with the sun, not a lot of shade along the path, so I wasn’t that hungry.  We also stopped at the gift shop before heading back down on the tram to the valley.  On the way up the mountain the tram operator plays an informational recording telling you the history of the tram.  On the way down, our tram operator played music including Sweet Caroline, and Pretty Woman and encouraged people to sing along.  

After the tram experience, we stopped at the Palm Springs Visitor center, then went to the Palm Springs Art Museum.  Note at 1:00 PM it was around 112 degrees in the valley, so no outdoor activities. The art museum was nice, it had some interesting pieces.  I’m not a big modern art fan, but I kind of liked the Norman Zammitt: Gradations exhibit which where lines of paint slowly transitioning from one color to the next.  Some of the piece reminded me of the color banding you sometimes get in digital art.  While I felt the Outburst Project: Alake Shilling was something out of a drug induced hallucination with lots of glitter.  Overall, the art museum wasn’t nice and kept us out of the heat.   The art museum is also near the very large Marylin Monroe Statue, so we got a picture of that as well.  From there it was back to the hotel.

I was done with the heat, so I stayed back in the hotel room and took a shower to cool off while mom went down to the pool for a little bit.  Apparently, the hotel was hosting a bingo game at the pool, but mom did not participate.  After a bit we went and grabbed a bite for dinner at Del Taco. One could compare Del Taco to a Taco Bell, but the Del Taco tacos are way better.   After dinner we stopped at a gas station to top off the tank, for our drive through Joshua Tree the next day.  Gas here is $4.89 a gallon.

Tomorrow will be an early day, since we want to do a few short hikes before the temperatures start to climb.  We will probably also stop at Shield’s Dates and possibly the Air Museum.