The Living Desert

On those rare occasions when it's cold and dreary in LA, the perfect antidote lies just 120 miles to the east, where the desert is perpetually sunny and warm. Last Sunday, I drove to Palm Desert to visit a zoo / botanical gardens called The Living Desert. While it was cloudy and struggling to break 60 degrees in LA, the sun was bright and the temperatures were in the 80s in beautiful Palm Desert. :)

The Living Desert specializes in animal and plant life of desert ecosystems, similar to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tuscon, AZ. The Living Desert isn't on a par with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (which is absolutely world-class wonderful - if you haven't been, you must go!), but it was nice and had interesting exhibits. Some of the more unusual animals included hyenas, bat-eared foxes, a Mexican wolf, and a thirsty gila monster. Scattered around the grounds were palm trees, of course, and also beautiful animal sculptures. The weather was perfect on this day, but there were reminders that the desert can get brutally hot.

On the way back, I stopped in Palm Springs for a few hours to see this famous but strange town. The cities of Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and Palm Springs are small islands of civilization plopped down in the middle of an empty desert. As you walk along a "downtown" street, if you stop and peer down a side street you will see a barren desert landscape seemingly just a few blocks away. Palm Springs is more touristy than I expected, and clearly has a substantial retirement community. It also had some nice galleries and artsy shops, where I was tempted to buy funky reptilian wall art.

The full set of pictures is here.