Jan 25

Written by: chris
1/25/2009 

Los Angeles

Los Angeles! Hollywood! Stars! We drove straight to the centre of the celluloid universe: Hollywood Boulevard. This is just plain good fun…Stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame and pick out your favourite stars…from Bing Crosby to James Dean and hand-prints from Humphrey Bogart…even nose-prints from Jimmy Durante! Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is not only one of the world’s great movie palaces but also a gathering place for some theatrical and wacky characters. On to Sunset Strip and the Movie Stars Home Tour. Time to pinch yourself and look up to the hills to see that famous Hollywood sign.

San Diego

South to the sun: San Diego is now the U.S.’s eighth largest city, but is a more livable place than L.A. Balboa Park is a glorious, shady city park which is a historical legacy of the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition, with museums, walking trails and the Old Globe Theatre. Its biggest attraction, and deservedly so, is the San Diego Zoo, which many recognize as the best in the world. We particularly enjoyed the reptiles and the primates. Sports are big here too and we thrilled to an exciting Chargers game at magnificent Qualcomm Stadium.

Palm Springs

East to the desert: Palm Springs is a palm-lined oasis in the dry Coachella Valley and a curious mix of sunshine retirees and hip youngsters. Shopping, spas and golf a-plenty with resorts from modest to magnificent. We stayed at the Palm Mountain Resort and Spa: splashes of bougainvillea, citrus trees heavy with fruit and a steaming pool beneath a mountain backdrop. And Ruby’s Diner a short stroll away – the best diner breakfast ever!

Mount San Jacinto

Upwards to the Alpine Zone: the Palm Springs Aerial tramway whisks you from the desert heat at 2,600 feet to Alpine tundra at over 8,500 feet in 14 minutes. The cable car floor revolves as you ascend, providing everyone with views of Palm Springs in the arid Coachella Valley and the snow-clad slopes of Mount Jacinto. From the top station, trails fan out into the Mount San Jacinto State Park and Wilderness Area, a snowy wonderland and an amazing contrast to the desert below.

Joshua Tree National Park

North to the Twilight Zone: The Joshua Tree National Park is where the Mojave and the Colorado Deserts converge in a weird and wonderful collage of strange desert flora and even stranger desert landforms. The flat desert expanses are studded with the Joshua Trees, which are not trees at all, but over-grown yuccas reaching 35 feet high and living for hundreds of years. The exclamation marks on this other-worldly scene are the towering piles of boulders that are remnants of magma upwelling from the earth’s interior and now present the perfect vantage points to contemplate this unique landscape.