A Long, Early Morning Walk In Rancho Mirage

On Saturday morning we took a drive and stopped for a bit at one of our favourite small parks in Rancho Mirage which is just a few miles east of Palm Springs.

The park has an official name which escapes me but most folks seem to refer to it as Frank Sinatra park as there is a commemorative plaque honouring him and he lived on the same street as the park - Frank Sinatra Drive – of course!

The last time we were at this park we noticed a sign for the Butler-Adams trail.  This trail followed a deep wash (sort of like a ravine) that is built to carry water in the case of heavy rains as there don’t seem to be many storm drains in this area. 

Most times these washes are bone dry.  The Butler-Adams Trail was built high on the bank of the wash and a few hundred yards along the trail it careened down into the wash and across where it followed a golf course for quite a distance.  We decided to walk the entire trail to see where it led.

This is typical of the dry washes in the Palm Springs area

You may be able to see our silver Chevy Duramax parked above in the wash. This was the start of the trail with the Frank Sinatra park on the right.  One thing we really enjoy about walking in this part of town is the variety of fruit trees compared to home in BC. At home, Apple, Pear and Cherry trees are very common but not the Lemon, Grapefruit and Orange trees we see everywhere in Palm Springs.

One of the loaded Grapefruit trees in the park

It was another beautiful, warm morning and just perfect for a hike. This is another very popular area so we met many other folks along the way plus a lot of dogs out for walks as well. 

It wasn’t very long before the dry wash of the ravine turned into a lush, green golf course.  In Palm Springs they seem to build golf courses anywhere they can and if a wash never gets water in it then turn it into a golf course!

The hike turned out to be quite a nice walk that took us about 2 hours to get to the end and back.

It was lunchtime by the time we got back to the RV park.  After a quick bite to eat we just went out back and settled into our gravity chairs to soak up some sunshine.

It’s been 2 weeks since we arrived at the Sands and I still haven’t unpacked my golf clubs.  They’re still in the basement storage area where I put them when we left Desert Hot Springs late last March.

Who knows – maybe I’ll just leave them there and skip golf this year.  Then again, I just may get the urge to give it a go one of these fine days we’ll see.

Yesterday, Sunday, we drove out to the Whitewater Preserve for another hike this time out into the desert.  We really expected to see some water in the Whitewater River given the storms that passed through this area a few weeks ago.  The river was barely a trickle.  In face, we were able to tip-toe right across it but I’ll leave that hike until my next blog probably tomorrow!

Thanks for visiting!