so, updates and a half!
i know, i owe you guys so many updates, what can i say, i'm lazy...
so, let me start at the beginning... or at least, where i left off...
so, tuesday in palm springs turned into tuesday in joshua tree national park. and catching up with disney-girl! so,after breakfast, our morning walk and playtime with langsong, jifse and i head over to fil's house, drop off the kid, get keys to fil's car, and head out to joshua tree national park. the car, one of those volvo suv's, annoying gas guzzler that it is, has one of those navigation systems so we just type in our destination and off we go. so, we're driving out to what feels like the middle of no-where, keeping an eye out for gas stations for the way home. we pass about three towns, of varying sizes and not probable dinner stops. so, we arrive at one of the park entrances, almost totally drive past the visitor center. i call disney gir (herein dg)l, see where she's at, an it turns out jifse and i have some time to kill. so we check out the gift shop, and then go on the mara oasis trail that starts out from the visitor center and winds around. we finally meet up with dg and there is much hugging and giddiness. we checked out the map and decided on three destinations with short hiking trails. i had to see skull rock, arch rock, and the cactus garden. we all piled into her car (yeah, the smaller of the two cars by far, but it makes for a greater adventure) and head into the park. turns out dg missed the visitor center and drove into the park a ways before realizing that she passed the place. so, the park is a rather cool place, and i now know what a joshua tree is and why it's called that. the mormons, on their treck out west saw the 'trees' (they're actually a type of yucca plant and not really trees at all) and thought they looked like joshua, welcoming them to the promise-land. man, if i saw that tree in the middle of the desert, i would have seen joshua telling me to move on and not stop in the desert! but, hey, what do i know...
so, we stop first at skull rock, and yes, it does kinda look like a skull. so we decide to walk the trail, it says it's only .3 miles. not so bad. so we keep walking, dg and i catching up, everyone looking at the scenery, spotting the little wildlife (lots of cute lizards!) and we get to what looks like the end of the trail, but it's not where we started, and it's an rv type campground. so, we find a sign and see where the trail picks up again, and follow it around the other side of the road. well, we keep walking. jifse and i are wearing sandals. not good for walking in small gravel, but we live. and we walk. and walk. and walk. and then we get back and see that we took the long version of the trail that's 1.7 miles. no wonder we were a bit tired! but it was fun. and then it was off to arch rock. another trail! i forget how long this one said it was. but we wander. as we're wandering we see what looks like a coyote. kinda cool, but kinda scary too. but we finally wander around to the arch, but from the path it's not the best viewing angle. so we blaze a new trail (alright, it's not new, there'a gravel there and footprints so you know people do this all the time) and we climb up on some rocks to get a better view. it was way cool. so we continue wandering on the path, and i think it was jifse who noticed, aren't we walking where we saw the coyote earlier? yikes! but luckily we had no great wildlife encounters. so, we wander back to the car, and head out to see the cactus farm. on the way down we start driving into this open valley and we just have to pull over and stare. it's gorgeous and just amazing looking. then, back in the car to the farm. and when we get there, we see the best sign ever, telling us that the cactus are dangerous! and of course, we did see people touching the cacti and saying 'ouch!'. it was priceless! but i took a lot of artsy photos of the cacti. and dg commented on my penchant for taking back-lit photos. it was true, just about every shot i wanted i was staring into the sun. but many of them came out pretty cool anyway, so there. so, by this time it was getting later, we were hungry, and dg had to work in the morning. so we head back to the visitor center. jifse let me ride with dg and catch up as we left to find a gas station and restaurant. and it was funny, some random guy in the parking lot asked if we were all on spring break! i guess a group of giggling girls always seems like they're in college... so, we stopped for gas (evil suv gas guzzlers) and then stopped for dinner. it was a chain, but at least a chain restaurant that we don't have out east. i had the best tuna sandwhich i 'd had in a while! so, much catching up was done over dinner, and then it was time to say good-night. that's always the sad part... but, luckily i'd get to see dg again before i left. so, we made it home, smil was at the house watching the sleeping boy, and then we fell into bed.
so, langston-alarm woke me up at a none-to-civilized vacation hour of 6am. but he's cute, so i let him live. again with the breakfast followed by walk and playing 1-2-3. (if i didn't explain 1-2-3 it's where jifse and i each take one of langston's hands, we walk and count 1-2-and then on 3 we swing langston up. it's a great arm workout and the munchkin loves it. ) then, we headed over to the fil's house. he shuffled us out in his car and jifse, langston and i went to the living desert museum. we think langston wore fil out the day before. a full day of langston with no real break unil dinner was more than fil was ready for. so, unfortunately we headed out kinda late in the morning, and it happened to be rather warm on this particular day. we arrived in time to see the beginning of an animal show, but langston was to squirmy to watch so we bailed. we wandered around a bit, langston was already hot and cranky. but we found a little playground which was good for a while. there was a slide, which was much liked by langston, and some underground tunnels, and a rope spider-web. but since it was hot, that didn't last that long. we wandered by some of the desert kitties, which was cool, and then saw a huge model train set that they have. that was really neat. by then langston was ready for his nap. way past ready, actually.. so we headed home, had some lunch and naptime. the afternoon was rather lazy for we were kinda tired too. an uneventful dinner and bed wrapped up the day...
thursday we actually did go to palm springs. since technically we were in indio the rest of the time where the fil actually lives :). anyway, it was the same morning routine. tea and the nice view, after the langston-alarm, playtime, shower, head out to fil's. he almost threw us out of the house and into his car this time, not the volvo, but the bmw little sports coupe. that was kinda fun. sadly i still don't know how to drive stick, so jifse did all the driving. we headed out and decided to to up the tram to the top of the mountain in palm springs. the drive out was rather nice, and we got there, again checking out the gift shop, then waited for our tram. it's pretty cool, but if you don't like heights, you probably wouldn't like this, the tram rotates as you're going up, so you get views of everything. there are 5 towers which hold up the cable, and as you go past each one the car sways. it's rather scary the first time, especially since on the way up i wasn't standing by anything that i could really hold on to! but we made it up safely and were on the top of the mountain. it was lunch time so we headed to the food area. there was a cafeteria type area, and a real restaurant area. we opted for the restuarant area- we wanted to treat ourselves. jifse had a lobster salad, complete with caviar (how fancy!) and i had a fantastic smoked ham sandwhich with sweet-potato fries! (they were sooooooooooooooooo good!) we lingered about lunch then headed out to look at the views. sadly, since we weren't really sure where we were going that morning, i didn't bring warmer clothes the temperature's about 30-40 degrees colder at the top of the mountain. jifse had thrown jeans, socks and a sweatshirt in the car, i just had a little sweatshirt and the shorts and t-shirt i was wearing. yikes! it was cold! but beautiful. on one side you overlook the valley/desert type area. you see all the built up areas, the forced greenery (jifse spent most of the trip annoyed by the overwatering to make green grass and flowers grow in what was basically a desert). on the other side of the mountain, evergreens and snow! it was beautiful. so we walked down the trail a bit into the foresty area, and then back up. it wasn't so cold if the wind wasn't blowing, but man, once it was, it was bad. so, we headed back down the mountain, the swaying of the car wasn't as bad. on the way down. and then we were heading back towards indio we decided that we needed to do some more souvenier shopping and actually do it in palm springs. so we found a spot, parked and walked up and down wandering in and out of shops. there were lots of cool things. more success was had than with shopping in indio. sure, there were expensive, stupid things here, but there were more cheap things too. we found a great store called del sol where everyting is uv sensitive. everything, t-shirts, plastic rings, sunglasses, hair clips, nailpolish, changes color. the t-shirts and stuff are generally white, but in sunlight (or with black lights in the store) they become colorful. i got a few nailpolishes. (right now i'm wearing a light blue polish on my toe nails which turns green). i also found a really neat plastic ring (it was $4, and when you see it, you'll see how cool it is). it turned out we wandered into palm springs on a good day- they were having a street fair that night. so we wandered around long enough for them to set up and then wandered the stalls. pretty cool, we didn't get much, but it was fun. we bought some flowers for the smil, and generally just had fun. by the time we were ready to go, i got in touch with dg so we could figure out how we'd meet up. she had friday off and was coming out thursday night and staying until saturday morning when she had to leave for work!! so, jifse and i needed some dinner so we headed over to the cheesecake factory. dg was on her way, so we had her meet us there. cheesecake and good eats were had by all, and we headed home. we were tired, but we did some more catching up that evening before heading to bed.
thought i'd be more accurate with the title. so, dg got to experience the langston-alarm, and the morning ritual continued. langston took an instant liking to dg, which was not at all surprising. langston spent a long time playing with the doors to dg's room (the old open and close the door game, hours of entertainment there...) and then he also liked the cell-phone game. langston likes things with bottons, so cell-phones are fair game. so, after dropping the munchkin off at fil's, the girls headed out to do some last minute shopping, checking out stores and whatever. it was fun, ending with a trip to a 'california' restaurant. it wasn't that great of a place, lacked some ambience, but it wasn't horrible. so, more low-key hanging out continued, i started to pack, and by then i was starting to feel the onset of what would become a bad annoying cold. but, we all stayed up way too late but it was worth it in the end.
so saturday morning came way too fast. everybody got ready, packing was finished. we got ready to leave, dg got ready for work. dg followed us out and split off to go to work and we headed for the airport. we grabbed some lunch at the airport, and got on the plane. unlike the trip out, we had a third person in our row which meant langston needed to sit on our laps the entire trip. sadly he had napped in the car on the way to the airport, so he was wide awake for the trip. he discovered the buttons for the light and the attendant. i tried to keep him from pushing the light button of the gentleman sitting next to me, and i also tried to keep him from calling the attendant. yikes. he was generally restless and climbed on us a lot, refused to sit still to watch his favorite movie, and flat out objected to a nap. that was a fun four hours! the only up side is that the next trip, by law langston has to have his own seat. thank god! so, we finally made it home, i was feeling mostly like crap. we stopped for dinner (at a denny's), got home to jifse's house, where i got into my car and headed home to try to recouperate from a vacation taken with a two year old*.... the good news is that the fil is already planning next year's trip! woo-hoo!
* now, don't get me wrong, i love the munchkin, and the vacation was fantastic, but it was decidedly different from my normal vacations...
whew!
so, let me start at the beginning... or at least, where i left off...
so, tuesday in palm springs turned into tuesday in joshua tree national park. and catching up with disney-girl! so,after breakfast, our morning walk and playtime with langsong, jifse and i head over to fil's house, drop off the kid, get keys to fil's car, and head out to joshua tree national park. the car, one of those volvo suv's, annoying gas guzzler that it is, has one of those navigation systems so we just type in our destination and off we go. so, we're driving out to what feels like the middle of no-where, keeping an eye out for gas stations for the way home. we pass about three towns, of varying sizes and not probable dinner stops. so, we arrive at one of the park entrances, almost totally drive past the visitor center. i call disney gir (herein dg)l, see where she's at, an it turns out jifse and i have some time to kill. so we check out the gift shop, and then go on the mara oasis trail that starts out from the visitor center and winds around. we finally meet up with dg and there is much hugging and giddiness. we checked out the map and decided on three destinations with short hiking trails. i had to see skull rock, arch rock, and the cactus garden. we all piled into her car (yeah, the smaller of the two cars by far, but it makes for a greater adventure) and head into the park. turns out dg missed the visitor center and drove into the park a ways before realizing that she passed the place. so, the park is a rather cool place, and i now know what a joshua tree is and why it's called that. the mormons, on their treck out west saw the 'trees' (they're actually a type of yucca plant and not really trees at all) and thought they looked like joshua, welcoming them to the promise-land. man, if i saw that tree in the middle of the desert, i would have seen joshua telling me to move on and not stop in the desert! but, hey, what do i know...
so, we stop first at skull rock, and yes, it does kinda look like a skull. so we decide to walk the trail, it says it's only .3 miles. not so bad. so we keep walking, dg and i catching up, everyone looking at the scenery, spotting the little wildlife (lots of cute lizards!) and we get to what looks like the end of the trail, but it's not where we started, and it's an rv type campground. so, we find a sign and see where the trail picks up again, and follow it around the other side of the road. well, we keep walking. jifse and i are wearing sandals. not good for walking in small gravel, but we live. and we walk. and walk. and walk. and then we get back and see that we took the long version of the trail that's 1.7 miles. no wonder we were a bit tired! but it was fun. and then it was off to arch rock. another trail! i forget how long this one said it was. but we wander. as we're wandering we see what looks like a coyote. kinda cool, but kinda scary too. but we finally wander around to the arch, but from the path it's not the best viewing angle. so we blaze a new trail (alright, it's not new, there'a gravel there and footprints so you know people do this all the time) and we climb up on some rocks to get a better view. it was way cool. so we continue wandering on the path, and i think it was jifse who noticed, aren't we walking where we saw the coyote earlier? yikes! but luckily we had no great wildlife encounters. so, we wander back to the car, and head out to see the cactus farm. on the way down we start driving into this open valley and we just have to pull over and stare. it's gorgeous and just amazing looking. then, back in the car to the farm. and when we get there, we see the best sign ever, telling us that the cactus are dangerous! and of course, we did see people touching the cacti and saying 'ouch!'. it was priceless! but i took a lot of artsy photos of the cacti. and dg commented on my penchant for taking back-lit photos. it was true, just about every shot i wanted i was staring into the sun. but many of them came out pretty cool anyway, so there. so, by this time it was getting later, we were hungry, and dg had to work in the morning. so we head back to the visitor center. jifse let me ride with dg and catch up as we left to find a gas station and restaurant. and it was funny, some random guy in the parking lot asked if we were all on spring break! i guess a group of giggling girls always seems like they're in college... so, we stopped for gas (evil suv gas guzzlers) and then stopped for dinner. it was a chain, but at least a chain restaurant that we don't have out east. i had the best tuna sandwhich i 'd had in a while! so, much catching up was done over dinner, and then it was time to say good-night. that's always the sad part... but, luckily i'd get to see dg again before i left. so, we made it home, smil was at the house watching the sleeping boy, and then we fell into bed.
so, langston-alarm woke me up at a none-to-civilized vacation hour of 6am. but he's cute, so i let him live. again with the breakfast followed by walk and playing 1-2-3. (if i didn't explain 1-2-3 it's where jifse and i each take one of langston's hands, we walk and count 1-2-and then on 3 we swing langston up. it's a great arm workout and the munchkin loves it. ) then, we headed over to the fil's house. he shuffled us out in his car and jifse, langston and i went to the living desert museum. we think langston wore fil out the day before. a full day of langston with no real break unil dinner was more than fil was ready for. so, unfortunately we headed out kinda late in the morning, and it happened to be rather warm on this particular day. we arrived in time to see the beginning of an animal show, but langston was to squirmy to watch so we bailed. we wandered around a bit, langston was already hot and cranky. but we found a little playground which was good for a while. there was a slide, which was much liked by langston, and some underground tunnels, and a rope spider-web. but since it was hot, that didn't last that long. we wandered by some of the desert kitties, which was cool, and then saw a huge model train set that they have. that was really neat. by then langston was ready for his nap. way past ready, actually.. so we headed home, had some lunch and naptime. the afternoon was rather lazy for we were kinda tired too. an uneventful dinner and bed wrapped up the day...
thursday we actually did go to palm springs. since technically we were in indio the rest of the time where the fil actually lives :). anyway, it was the same morning routine. tea and the nice view, after the langston-alarm, playtime, shower, head out to fil's. he almost threw us out of the house and into his car this time, not the volvo, but the bmw little sports coupe. that was kinda fun. sadly i still don't know how to drive stick, so jifse did all the driving. we headed out and decided to to up the tram to the top of the mountain in palm springs. the drive out was rather nice, and we got there, again checking out the gift shop, then waited for our tram. it's pretty cool, but if you don't like heights, you probably wouldn't like this, the tram rotates as you're going up, so you get views of everything. there are 5 towers which hold up the cable, and as you go past each one the car sways. it's rather scary the first time, especially since on the way up i wasn't standing by anything that i could really hold on to! but we made it up safely and were on the top of the mountain. it was lunch time so we headed to the food area. there was a cafeteria type area, and a real restaurant area. we opted for the restuarant area- we wanted to treat ourselves. jifse had a lobster salad, complete with caviar (how fancy!) and i had a fantastic smoked ham sandwhich with sweet-potato fries! (they were sooooooooooooooooo good!) we lingered about lunch then headed out to look at the views. sadly, since we weren't really sure where we were going that morning, i didn't bring warmer clothes the temperature's about 30-40 degrees colder at the top of the mountain. jifse had thrown jeans, socks and a sweatshirt in the car, i just had a little sweatshirt and the shorts and t-shirt i was wearing. yikes! it was cold! but beautiful. on one side you overlook the valley/desert type area. you see all the built up areas, the forced greenery (jifse spent most of the trip annoyed by the overwatering to make green grass and flowers grow in what was basically a desert). on the other side of the mountain, evergreens and snow! it was beautiful. so we walked down the trail a bit into the foresty area, and then back up. it wasn't so cold if the wind wasn't blowing, but man, once it was, it was bad. so, we headed back down the mountain, the swaying of the car wasn't as bad. on the way down. and then we were heading back towards indio we decided that we needed to do some more souvenier shopping and actually do it in palm springs. so we found a spot, parked and walked up and down wandering in and out of shops. there were lots of cool things. more success was had than with shopping in indio. sure, there were expensive, stupid things here, but there were more cheap things too. we found a great store called del sol where everyting is uv sensitive. everything, t-shirts, plastic rings, sunglasses, hair clips, nailpolish, changes color. the t-shirts and stuff are generally white, but in sunlight (or with black lights in the store) they become colorful. i got a few nailpolishes. (right now i'm wearing a light blue polish on my toe nails which turns green). i also found a really neat plastic ring (it was $4, and when you see it, you'll see how cool it is). it turned out we wandered into palm springs on a good day- they were having a street fair that night. so we wandered around long enough for them to set up and then wandered the stalls. pretty cool, we didn't get much, but it was fun. we bought some flowers for the smil, and generally just had fun. by the time we were ready to go, i got in touch with dg so we could figure out how we'd meet up. she had friday off and was coming out thursday night and staying until saturday morning when she had to leave for work!! so, jifse and i needed some dinner so we headed over to the cheesecake factory. dg was on her way, so we had her meet us there. cheesecake and good eats were had by all, and we headed home. we were tired, but we did some more catching up that evening before heading to bed.
thought i'd be more accurate with the title. so, dg got to experience the langston-alarm, and the morning ritual continued. langston took an instant liking to dg, which was not at all surprising. langston spent a long time playing with the doors to dg's room (the old open and close the door game, hours of entertainment there...) and then he also liked the cell-phone game. langston likes things with bottons, so cell-phones are fair game. so, after dropping the munchkin off at fil's, the girls headed out to do some last minute shopping, checking out stores and whatever. it was fun, ending with a trip to a 'california' restaurant. it wasn't that great of a place, lacked some ambience, but it wasn't horrible. so, more low-key hanging out continued, i started to pack, and by then i was starting to feel the onset of what would become a bad annoying cold. but, we all stayed up way too late but it was worth it in the end.
so saturday morning came way too fast. everybody got ready, packing was finished. we got ready to leave, dg got ready for work. dg followed us out and split off to go to work and we headed for the airport. we grabbed some lunch at the airport, and got on the plane. unlike the trip out, we had a third person in our row which meant langston needed to sit on our laps the entire trip. sadly he had napped in the car on the way to the airport, so he was wide awake for the trip. he discovered the buttons for the light and the attendant. i tried to keep him from pushing the light button of the gentleman sitting next to me, and i also tried to keep him from calling the attendant. yikes. he was generally restless and climbed on us a lot, refused to sit still to watch his favorite movie, and flat out objected to a nap. that was a fun four hours! the only up side is that the next trip, by law langston has to have his own seat. thank god! so, we finally made it home, i was feeling mostly like crap. we stopped for dinner (at a denny's), got home to jifse's house, where i got into my car and headed home to try to recouperate from a vacation taken with a two year old*.... the good news is that the fil is already planning next year's trip! woo-hoo!
* now, don't get me wrong, i love the munchkin, and the vacation was fantastic, but it was decidedly different from my normal vacations...
whew!