Tues., March 9

Sandi came down last Friday and I went to pick her up at LAX. I guess there was a bet going on at home to see if I could actually find the place. Most probably thought I would get lost and end up in a frontier village in Central Mexico. Either that or the Watts district of Los Angeles. I didn’t end up at either place, I just listened to what Mavis Beacon (our GPS lady) said, and I drove right to the correct parking lot in front of the correct terminal. Of course I was there about 2 hours early as I wanted to have enough time to pry my hands off the steering wheel after the two hour drive here. On the way back it took us about 3-½ hours as we sat in the Great Los Angeles Parking Lot (alias freeway) for much of the time.

I don’t know why everyone says that LA is such an unfriendly city. People were honking and waving at me all the way here. I felt like a celebrity or something. I was making new friends all the way. Of course, I haven’t personally met any of them yet. They may have thought I was a movie star or something. Some were even waving their middle finger at me, of course it was probably just because they couldn’t get their other fingers up quick enough.

On Saturday we drove east to Palm Springs. We tried to go to Lake Arrowhead, but we were turned around by chain restrictions as it had just snowed the night before. We did visit the Palm Springs Tramway, but didn’t take it up. We marveled at all wind turbines in the area, drove around town, visited an art festival, and almost viewed the longest playing movie in town 'The Sex Life of Dates.' A town near there is reputed to be the Date Capital of the California. I'm not a big date fan as they're too close to raisins, and I'm not a big raisin fan either.

Sunday we drove out to the desert to Joshua Tree National Park and I almost froze my ass off. It got down to 33* at the higher elevations.
While at the park we saw a sign that said "Exhibit" but we drove past it as I thought it was a tad too cold for any kind of exhibiting. Maybe if we come here later on I'll consider it. I would highly recommend the park, not for exhibiting, but for its natural beauty and starkness.