| Indian Palms Vacation Club, Indio, California |
| October 14 - 21, 2005 |
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We had made this reservation some time ago for John's time-share condominium at Indian Palms Vacation Club, on the grounds of the historic 27-hole Indian Palms Country Club, on Monroe Street, Indio, California. John has had this timeshare since 1978, but has rarely stayed there. We drove there via Temecula, where we had a good lunch at the Country Garden restaurant. At Temecula we turned back southeast on CA79 to Aguanga, then west on CA 371 and CA 74 to Palm Desert. This latter road is called the Palms to Pines highway, and has a spectacular descent to Palm Desert. We were warmly welcomed at the office and were allocated a two-story, two-bedroom townhouse right at the gate to the larger of the two pools. This we welcomed, except when some guests disobeyed the rules by using it noisily late at night We enjoyed our stay, sometimes going shopping for Christmas presents at Palm Desert Mall, and visiting Palm Springs. The weather was fine until Tuesday night when there was a spectacular thunderstorm, with almost continuous lightning flashes for quite a while. The following day there was quite a lot of flooding, so we did not go out again until Thursday, when we visited the Thousand Palms Oasis in the Cochella Valley Preserve, which lies right on the San Andreas earthquake fault, which is overdue. We hiked from the oasis to the pond about a mile north Afterwards we wished to go through Box Canyon to Mecca, and went west on Dillon Road, which had lots of mud in low places, then on I 10 to the Box Canyon exit, where we found that the road was closed, presumably by a mudslide. Instead, we turned the other way into Joshua Tree National Park, and explored Cottonwood Spring. We returned the next day the way we came, which is the shortest. |