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In Palm Springs

 There are times when you visit a place to enjoy the things that it is famous for. There are other times that you go to visit family. 


We spent the last two days in Palm Springs visiting my husband's Cousin Ruthie. Ruthie was the first of her generation, my husband was the youngest of that generation. 


We landed at LAX in the early evening and stopped for the night in Riverside so we didn't have to do the entire drive at night on unfamiliar roads.


The next day we set out for Palm Springs and the suburban landscape soon changed to mountainous desert 



















As we got closer to Palm Springs we travel through a massive wind farm.

 




For miles and miles on both sides of the road there were windmills up and down the mountain slopes. They were majestic and looked alike. ost as if they were taking part in an ancient religious ritual. 

The mountains press up close to Palm Springs.


Our mission for this visit was to spend as much time as we could with Ruthie. We hadn't spent time with her in person since 2018 although we have visited virtually over many Zoom Shabbat dinners.








Mostly, we spent our time together doing mundane things.


This afternoon we visited the design museum and saw this wonderful exhibit.







There is nothing better than a wonderful design exhibition 


Then it was time for us to say goodbye to Cousin Ruthie.


We had to drive back towards LA for the next part of our adventure. Our drive coincided with what had promised to be a serious storm.







We drove past the wind farm again.














We passed a gas station decorated with giant dinosaurs.









We drove through what the weather reporters were calling an atmospheric river.




A drive that should have taken two hours took well over three hours.






Earlier today we were looking for simple accomodations for tonight. We basically just needed a place to sleep before we head to Santa Barbara and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's lovely home. We looked at online motel listings.

All of the hotels list their various amenities, pools, hot tubs, a free breakfast, free Wi-Fi. One hotel listed toilet paper as an amenity. We weren't looking for luxurious accomodations.But a hotel that thought that mentioning toilet paper as an amenity was perhaps not quite fancy enough for our simple needs. We chose to stay elsewhere.

I am ending this post with a few bonus shots of Palm Springs.

This was taken from the parking lot of our hotel 





Another parking lot view





You know standard  strip mall architecture?? In most places it looks cheap. Those identical buildings look incredible in this landscape.


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