Day 22 (7 August 2016) - Palm Springs to Las Vegas

The day in Palm Springs began with an early morning swim in the pool. The hotel was hosting a salsa competition well into the night so we had the pool pretty much to ourselves in the morning. By 9am the temperature was gaining and we left the pool check out and headed off to the main thing to do in Palm Springs apart from laze about is the Palm Springs tramway. The tramway takes you too the top of the valley to an alpine environment and there are a number of hikes and walking trails up there. Whilst we did not do any of them we went up there for the view and ambience.

Palm Springs Tramway

The pictures below show the view from the top of the mountain. If you have the time its a worthwhile thing to do. We did not experience massive queues there.

There are opportunities to camp and make a long day of the time at the top of the mountain. We had a long drive ahead of us so we spent only a couple of hours at the top before the descent.

Route to Las Vegas : Joshua Tree and Mohave Desert

I had planned a slightly intricate route to Las Vegas, I wanted to cover the Joshua Tree National Park and experience the Mojave desert. Part of the route was also to take in the historic (old) Route 66. Our route is shown below

The key element of this route were to back track from Palm Springs to Indio and further on the Interstate 10. At the junction drive through the Joshua Tree National Park up to Twenty Nine Palms/ From there continue north until hitting Amboy where you hit the historic Route 66. You only traverse the Route 66 for a short distance (6.6 miles I was told my Mrs. themanishdiary). Then drive through the Mohave desert, we fortunately hit it at sunset as you can see from the photos. Once you've passed Cima you continue north until you hit the interstate that takes you to Las Vegas.

Joshua Tree National Park

The Joshua Tree National Park is a very interesting drive, at the southern end of the park are no Joshua Tree's but mainly different class of Yucca trees some of these were pretty interesting and looked slightly dangerous and toxic.

Joshua Trees

You'll have seen I hinted at strange cactus trees in my earlier post. As we drove through the Joshua Tree National Park it became clear that what we had seen were Joshua Trees. A few more daylight examples here. The park has a core drive thats worth doing we did the main segment and the view point (Key's view).

When you reach Key's View you're again looking down at the desert floor and towards Palm Springs. Once clear days you can see further a field towards Mexico.

Route 66

From Joshua Tree National Parks as you exit through twentynine palms we drove north towards Amboy. We picked up old Route 66 from Amboy for a few miles west before we turned north through the Mohave desert.

We stopped off at Amboy where time seems to stand still and it looks like a place that inspired the Cars movie. The picture below show the Route 66 sign with a long "rail road" train in the background. I got bored after counting 106 carriages!

Mojave Desert

We drove the Mojave just as the sun was setting, this means that we hit Las Vegas late at night but it proved inspired timing as we managed to catch the sun setting as we were driving some of our photo's below. We had driven through the desert earlier in our trip so hitting the desert at sunset was truely perfect timing.

We eventually hit Las Vegas late at night but the long journey was worth it. Las Vegas was really all rest and relaxation until we started our final traversal through the national parks.