The last day of our visit, Christmas Day, we went on a hike on the Chuckwalla Trail to Paradise Rim. It was a fantastic scenic trail with lots of interesting rock formations, places to rock climb and my favorite: an arch! We hiked up to Paradise Rim and ate a sandwich overlooking the community below. We took our time coming back knowing it was our last day of hiking in such beautiful scenery for a while…
Mik’s dad is in his mid-70s, but is still a super thrill-seeker and an off-road maniac. We wanted to spend some time with him, so we let him coordinate some plans for all of us to do something together.
Snow Canyon, on the edge of town in St. George has Red Navajo sandstone and ancient lava rock as far as the eye can see! We hiked the Petrified Dunes trail, which is a really easy hike up on the slickrock. We had fun taking jumping & handstand photos and channeling our inner Ansel Adams.
The last time I was in Utah was in November 2005 and I had no idea that Arches National Park was even a thing, let alone the insane wonder of it all. This time we went to Zion National Park and it was a whole separate level of awesome.
Mik’s dad & stepmother live in St. George, Utah so we drove out for a little family gathering over Christmas. Here are pretty pointless photos from the drive there!
What we thought was going to be a standard day-trip to go wine tasting in Los Olivos ended up including a last minute overnight booking at the Hamlet Inn… We were already members at Evan’s Ranch and Byron, but nestled directly between the two is Presqu’ile Winery. We decided to give them a go based on the recommendation from Andrea over at Byron Winery.
We went to The Spring Resort for a weekend birthday getaway and fell in love! So quiet, peaceful and relaxing… The hosts are super professional and catered to our every whim. Most places in Palm Springs are overcrowded, a little ragged and loud; but at The Spring Resort we often had the pools to ourselves, met very kind travelers and found all of the amenities to be exactly as expected. We stayed in Room 9, which is at the end of the pool and comes with a hammock around the corner… highly recommended!
I woke up with a wild hair this morning & decided it was high time for a new adventure! So we packed up the backpack and headed out to Fillmore, CA to check out the Tar Creek waterfall hike. Generally, I can make & execute plans pretty well, but this was not one of those times. The directions I had on my phone seemed good enough, but they really explained nothing & since I didn’t have a signal, we were lost 80% of the time. We fumbled our way all over the back country and never even found the purpose of the trip: the waterfall. FAIL. Better luck next time?
We took a little extended weekend over Easter and stayed at Korakia Pensione – a fabulous boutiquey little hotel in downtown Palm Springs. They have two pools, a bocce ball court, free bike rentals, an outdoor projected movie every night, fire pits, day beds, free home cooked breakfast — you really can’t ask for more!
Second rule of travel (behind sampling local fruit): take a hike! Palm Springs has a surprising number of options for hiking, but we settled on the Palm Canyon hike in the Indian Canyons Reserve. ($9/each to get in, but worth it… Thanks for sharing your land!)
We rented bikes from Banana Azul and went exploring first thing the next morning. The town of Puerto Viejo is probably 2km from the hotel, but you can ride all the way to the end of the road at Manzanillo – about 20km one way. (Which we did on this day!) We were really hoping to go snorkeling, but as we rode around it was obvious that the ocean wasn’t in snorkeling condition: fast sets on rough seas… Either way, we had enough to keep us occupied with beach scouting and scoping out the little shops along the way.
The drive from La Fortuna to Puerto Viejo takes approx 5 hours, so we were picked up by the Interbus bright & early to set out on the road. Since all of the roads are two-lanes and not very good for passing, when a semi drove across our lane and landed in the ditch, it added an extra two hours onto our drive. The joys of the road!
