Palm Springs to Tucson
March 16-18, 2022
We departed Oakland on March 16 2022, and drove to Palm Springs via Lancaster, Palmdale and San Bernardino. The trip was 477 miles. The hills over the Grapevine were blanketed in California golden poppies. The traffic on I-10 was dreadful. We didn’t arrive until close to 7 p.m.
Our hotel was located just off of North Palm Canyon Drive, in the central part of Palm Springs. We enjoyed walking around the area which had many restaurants, cafés and art galleries.
Thursday, March 17, 2022
We met up with a friend who lives in Palm Springs in the winter and he drove us a bit more than a half hour to Palm Desert to the Living Desert Zoo and Garden. It is a fantastic zoo with animals from Africa, North America and Australia desert climates. It was especially known for giraffes and rhino. The gardens were quite nice, photo at top of page.
An event was being set up with hundreds of inflated plants and animals which added to the festive aura. We spent three hours there. Our friend was impressed and planned to return.
After lunch back in Palm Springs, we found we needed to return to Palm Desert to go to the Apple Store. That cut into our time to sight-see in the afternoon, so we only had a short time to check out Palm Springs. After completing our errand, we drove around Palm Springs for an hour or so, looking at several houses of mid–20th century architecture. We wished we had time to take a mid-century modern tour or visit the art museum, but we saw a few famous homes and got a photo outside the museum (second below).
We had dinner with our friend at a quintessential Palm Springs restaurant and dined outside on their patio.
Friday, March 18, 2022
We left Palm Springs early and drove east on I–10 towards Phoenix (275 miles, a bit over four hours), crossing the Colorado River at Blythe (same route we drove in reverse during our trip in October 2020). The water level in the river was painfully low.
We arrived in Phoenix, had lunch and then went to the Desert Botanical Garden in Papago Park, where they had a special exhibit of glass art by Dale Chihuly. The gardens had beautiful spring blooms on a nice day in the low 80s. We had been there before, but the glass art added a nice bonus to this visit.
From there we drove south on I-10 about an hour and a half to Tucson for the night. Our hotel was located downtown, and we had some time to walk around before having dinner. It was a Friday night and there were many people out and about, much more activity than when we were here in October 2020.
Tomorrow we will drive through New Mexico and reach Texas.
