After spending a few days with family over the Christmas holidays in Palm Desert, I needed time to myself. Since the sun set early – before 5 p.m. – I knew that if I wanted to hike alone, I would need to hit a trail earlier in the day. I read up on the Palm Desert Cross Trail, located about 10 miles away.
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Six years after our initial trip, we revisited Joshua Tree National Park again. This time, we focused on the southern entrance, which is closer to Palm Springs and Palm Desert.
Joshua Tree National Park, with a total area of almost 800,000 acres, is about 140 miles east of Los Angeles. It spans parts of the Colorado Desert (eastern side) and the Mojave Desert (western side); two very different ecosystems. When visiting a national park, we always download the Just Ahead audio guides to learn more details as we drive around.
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For Christmas this year, we flew to Pasadena. The plan was to open gifts at my brother-in-law’s house and then drive to Palm Springs for the following four days. Palm Springs was wonderful, but Pasadena is pretty cool too.
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I wanted Dear Hubby (DH) to see Niagara Falls since he’d never been there, and I had only been there in 6th grade. We also wanted to check out the Finger Lakes of New York. Since we had to fly out of DC on our return trip (Thing 2 was doing a summer internship there), we quickly traveled to the Hudson River Valley and Philly. This is a fast-paced itinerary with lots of waterfall hikes!
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