Not traveling, we made it to church this morning.
After church it was lunch and then back to the pool. We have made it to the pool all 9 days that we have been here so far, except for the second day when we headed to Joshua Tree. It is supposed to cool off this week. 🙁
Our RV park in Palm Springs is attached to a nice little golf course neighborhood. When we have nothing to do in the evenings we like to go for a walk around the neighborhood. On this occasion, we were taking on the Neighborhood Challenge, which is the longest walk through both sections of the neighborhood.
Susan had the good idea of looking up some holiday lights in Palm Springs, so we could cap off our day of decorating. She found Robolights, which was awesome. Words cannot describe the scale of this place, which was at a private residence just a few blocks from downtown Palm Springs.
With some down time today, and no water restrictions, we took advantage of the nice weather and washed the RV.
Traditionally we decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, or as soon as we are home after Thanksgiving, if we are traveling. This year was no exception. We had already bought a small tree and some decorations at our last stay so we were all ready for the decorating. The kids were very excited to listen to Christmas music and to decorate.
One of the strangest things about being on the road is celebrating major holidays. Normally we spend most of Thanksgiving with family, but on the road it is just us. We try to make the most of it. Today was easy because after spending the morning doing food prep, we were able to spend the whole afternoon at the pool. It was definitely a different Thanksgiving.
Joshua Tree National Park is about an hour from where we are staying Palm Springs. We headed that way this morning, not knowing what to expect, other than Joshua Trees. Joshua Trees are cool, but the real beauty of the park is the huge piles of rock that have evolved there over time. The best thing of all is that you are encouraged to go off the trail and climb on the rocks. The kids had a blast with this part.
While we were there we went on a couple of hikes, drove to an overlook, and the kids earned their Jr. Ranger badges, of course.
Today we made the short drive to Palm Springs, about 3 hours. When we arrived it was sunny and warm and we couldn’t wait to go swimming.
We went for an evening walk and to our surprise there was a nice fireworks show about a mile from our RV park that we could watch.
Not far from our campground is Vasquez Rocks, a cool rock formation that has been featured in many shows and movies. We spent some time this afternoon exploring and climbing. It was neat.
Today we ventured back into LA to visit Hollywood again and get some ice cream.
One of the things we didn’t know about our campground until we got here is that there are train tracks that run right along one of the borders. Our site was not too far from here and we really enjoyed the trains going past, during the day. At night and in the middle of the night it was a little annoying, but during the day it was fun to see. Whenever we would hear a train coming the kids would all run outside and clap. Rose and Lucia loved it!
