San Diego Trip: Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

We spent a couple of days up at Todd & Denise's near Palm Springs. One day we took the Palm Spring Aerial Tramway up to the top of Mount San Jacinto. It was amazingly steep, yet quite breathtaking. The tram car itself turns around as you go up so your view is always changing.

Here's the view going up. At the crest of the mountain on the right, you can see Palm Springs...and a whole lot of desert.

You can see the tram car going down while we are going up. As we got higher, we started to see green things...like trees.


At the top, we went on a little hike through the deserty, rocky forest.

Nora and Denise came along.

(You have to closely watch Nora...she is fearless, and there were a lot of hazards on our hike.)

Trevor and Ethan managed to scramble to the top of every single large rock we encountered.

It was interesting how much cooler it was up there...probably 75 degrees, while it was 110 degrees in Palm Springs.

On the way down, we had our noses pressed to the glass...while the inside floor rotated. You couldn't keep your nose there long.

Ethan chose to sit in the middle of the tram on the way down...not such a fan of dizzying heights while rotating.

Todd, Denise, and Nora at the bottom.

I have to say the desert does have it's own type of beauty. And, I think the desert is the exact environmental opposite of Minnesota!