Joshua Trees - Have We Found What We Were Looking For?

This is definitely the last posting before we return home to the UK.

From San Diego we drove through the Jacinto Valley into the Desert Area in which Palm Springs is located. We went there for a final dose of warm weather, and we were not dissapointed; it was a very bright and veryt toasty 75/85 degrees...goodness knows what its like in the summer.

We got some very reasonable accommodation in Palm Springs which had a great pool. We did some very short rides in the area but big chunks of the cycle paths are part of big urban duel carriageways so that was not much fun. We headed off to Yucca Valley for the final few days because it was nearer the Joshua Tree National Park. YV is in the high desert and is therefore a bit cooler...its a very distinctive landscape; loads of barren schisty mountains and plains baking in the sun but with snow on their peaks. The dusk skies were spectacular. Our final bike ride in America this time around was a very respectable 70km in and out of the national park - we say a road runner (beep beep) and a gopher. Before we started we sat in a park drinking water and were visited by a humming bird which was really delightful. On the final stretch of our ride back to the Super 8 Motel (v. reasonable rates) we had our scariests encounter with an auto our whole trip; guy driving a big pick up truck clearly did not see us and had to hit his brakes to avoid us...first we heard was the squeal of his tyres etc behind us.

We have driven from Yucca Valley west along the IS 10. On coming into LA  we narrowly avoided driving into a car that was made invisible by the smoke it made from being on fire - it was parked up in an underpass and was impossible to see ahead (although a squint into the rear view mirror showed flames beginning to sprout up  from the front of the car. We are posting this final blog from our hotel in LA. With a bit of luck we will drop of the hire car tomorrow without incident and catch our 10 hour flight back to Heathrow. We will then stay a night with nephew Richard in Stamford, head up to North Yorks for a few days and then head for Anglesey for several weeks and sort out our return to the Red House in Ashby.

Love to all and bye for now.