Day Nine - July 11, 2015 - Palm Springs

Our job today was to find an oasis and the San Andreas Fault.  Those in the know will figure it out. They're symbiotic.

The San Andreas Fault is a slip fault.  The ground on one side is pushing northwest, the ground on the other is pushing southeast.  They grind past each other, although they are blocked farther west by a fault that is more north and south but that's another (earthquake) story.  The ground is more permeable along the fault line due to the grinding action.  Water from the mountains flows underground until it hits the fault.  Then it rises and emerges as a spring(s) and creates an oasis.

So, when we arrived at the Coachella Valley Preserve we saw our oasis and the fault at the same time.

As the boardwalk and the plant growth indicates, there is plenty of water here.  And it is needed to support the fan palms - they take up as much water as a willow tree.

From the oasis, we headed for the Joshua Tree National Forest for a totally different kind of scenery.  

This rock looks like it's ready to fall on us as we drive by.

From the park we get a view of the Coachella Valley.  But the L.A. smog that funnels through the western pass clouds our view of  Palm Springs (to the right).

The last item on our agenda for today was a date shake.  So we headed for Shields Date Garden (established in 1924) where we watched a 1950's movie called "The Romance and Sex Life of the Date".  Apparently, if it wasn't for humans collecting the pollen from the male trees and dusting it on the female trees there wouldn't be any dates at all.

Which would be a shame according to our new experts.  Well worth the stop!

We concluded another long driving day by heading up the Palms to Pines Highway.  Starting just above sea level with the temperature at 100F we travelled to over 5,000 feet and 73F, over switchbacks (sans guardrails for the most part) with the scenery changing from low desert - mostly sand - to high desert and finally to pine forests.  We reached San Diego at about 8;30 p.m. and, this time, the ladies decided to crash rather than swim.