palm springs

palm springs
palm springs tramway

at the top
it was 20 degrees C cooler at the top

mt san jacinto
one of the walks at the top

pine needles!
squirrel

in the tram car

wood pecker in the tree

kaufmann house at palm springs

highway to phoenix az
bronte driving through arizona

Wednesday 28th September 2011

Today saw us wake and embark on the palm springs aerial tramway which takes you on a 2 and a half mile ride on a gondola to the top of the Chino Canyon on the northern edge of Palm Springs. This tramway took 26 months to build and was put into service on September 14th 1963. In 2000 it was updated to its current style incorporating revolving tram cars. On the way up the tram car turns about 2 to 3 times. It is quite weird as the floor moves and not the entire car.

The ride up is spectacular, you start at the valley station which is 806 metres above sea level and you rise to 2596 metres at Mountain Station. Once at the top of San Jacinto Peak you can take in the views from the station back to the floor of the Coachella Valley seeing many towns spread out for miles.

There are a number of walks in the forest at the top and we decided to do the nature walk loop trail where we saw squirrels and a wood pecker that was merrily pecking at the trees. The temp was amazing, when we left the bottom it was about 35 and by the time we got to the top it was only 15. We spent about 2 hours at the top before making the journey back down to the car.

We stopped in at the information centre and got some info on famous houses in Palm Springs. Bronte wanted to see the Kaufmann House which is famous as Barry Manilow once lived there. The house was built in 1946 and is famous in the California area being listed in the top ten homes in LA in 2008. We now headed off towards Phoenix AZ where we were planning to spend the night before heading off to Tucson to visit the plane bone yard. The weather is amazingly hot, it has averaged between 39 and 41 all day today!