This page will go into more detail about our trip to Palm Desert (we had told everyone we were going to Palm Springs, but we actually ended up in Palm Desert). We were traveling in three vehicles, our Dodge Durango, Rebeca's Honda Civic and Greg brought the Toyota Camery. So we caravaned where ever we went. We all had cell phones, except for Greg and Carson, which would be the cause of grief later in the trip (I will explain this in the section on our trip home).
After reviewing the various maps and routes that we could take (and some advice from Grandpa Denning), we decided to take an alternate route, other than the freeway after we passed the California boarder.
The following maps show the route and distance of our trip.
The trip on the freeway was uneventful. We did make a couple of nature stops along the way and had lunch in Las Vegas. It was a quick stop at Wendy's. We got the first dose of what the week would be like. It was hot. We then got back on the road, all were anxious to arrive at the final destination. But, the best was yet to come.
As we approached the exit, Kathy and I paid more attention to the signs and our exit appeared out of no where. And from the looks of it, it went to no where. We headed south on a two lane road. Kathy had concerns about being on this narrow two lane road, but, we continued forward thinking of the pool and other things that awaited us at our destination.
This road had its own personality. It was not like the smooth freeway that we had been on. The road had many curves, left, right, and up and down. It was a good preparation for the roller coasters that we were planning on riding at Magic Mountain. At first the road was red, which intrigued Blake. He wanted to know why the road was red, instead of the normal black. I gave him an answer, but only a guess.
As we traveled through this barren country, Blake asked, "Dad, couldn't we have gone around this desert? Why did you want to come to the desert for vacation?" This was a pretty desolate place. As we came around one corner, we saw a group of people sitting along side the road and behind them, their car was upside down in the brush. We stopped and checked to see that all were okay. There was another man that had stopped and had called the police. One person had been critically injured, but another car had taken that person to the hospital. The rest seemed a little dazed, but okay. This just emphasized Kathy's concern about this road, we needed to be more careful as we drove it.
This route was suppose to get us to Palm Desert an hour earlier. It would probably have worked if we had made all the right turns. As we traveled from Cima to Amboy, we made a left turn on Route 66 going east, instead of going right. This wasn't too bad though, we only traveled 10 miles in the wrong direction, before recognizing that we had made a mistake. So we turned around and headed west. Which brought us into Amboy.
Amboy, what can I say about this place. We had to stop, nature was calling, especially for
the Honda Civic (this car had the three older girls in it). So we stopped at a small Cafe
(I think that this was the only building in Amboy) along the road to use the rest room.
As you can see from the picture above, the cafe had seem to fall in some disarray. But that
didn't concern us as much as the question, "Where are the bathrooms?" Rebeca is looking in their
direction, with some amusement. The following pictures explains why.
So Kathy, being the caring, honest and loving person that she is, went into the cafe and purchased two Gatorades (I believe that they were $2.00 a piece). Now we felt like we could use these restrooms without any guilt.
Rich and Blake used the men's room and it was quite a sight. We used the urinal and didn't dare look in any of the stalls. There was quite a smell. At least the sink worked and we were able to rinse our hands. For the girls, the experience was even worse. There were five of them and only one stall that worked. Michelle was quite intrigued with the fact that one of the stalls was duct taped shut. So they all lined up and took turns. The first thing that Michelle said was that the bathroom had a bad smell and that there was no sink that worked and so they could not wash their hands. Gram pulled out some antiseptic lotion and each of the girls used it as the came out of the bathroom shaking their heads and hands.
The consensus was that the restrooms were not worth the $4.00 we spent on the Gatorades. But, they did resolve the issue of the stop. We were now ready to continue on with our trip.
This wonderful experience in Amboy somewhat clouded our map reading ability. Our discussion was centered on the restrooms that we had just enjoyed and not on the map and so we missed our turn that would have taken us into Thousand Palms. Before we realized that we were on the wrong road, we had traveled about 25 miles. So we stopped at a gas station and filled up with gas and asked some directions. We had to turn around and come back to the correct turn. From that point we made all the correct turns and ended up arriving in Palm Desert around 6:30pm.
As we entered I-10 going east, we saw all the wind mills in the valley.
There were all sizes, large and small. From what we later learned, these wind mills are used to generate power to pump water from the surface to an underground reservoir.
But the best site was to see the sign for the Cook Street exit from I-10 in Palm Desert.
We had arrived.