On our way out to visit the Palm Springs Indian Canyons before the drive to Anza-Borrego, we stopped at the Rock Garden Cafe for Sunday Brunch.
For $10, you get quite the breakfast selection and you can have as much as you like. We had no idea what to expect. If you Google this place, you'll find quite the range of reviews. The patio was nice and shady, and the food and service were totally fine. Sure it's not anything like Cheeky's and their haute breakfast offerings, but the Rock Garden Cafe had plenty of appeal.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Indian Canyons for a hike through the palm oasis. It costs $8 a person to enter the canyon, but it's beautiful with lots of wild flowers. Thankfully this rock stays put while you head up to the parking area:
There was a fire through here in the '80s, but palms are remarkably resilient. The first bunch on this particular trail are just down the hill from the Trading Post.
Lots of brittle bush on the way down, or at least I think this is brittle bush... 
This particular palm is bound and determined to get some sun...
Pretty pink mallows 
...and these purple guys that look like fireworks shooting out of their middles...
Each palm oasis provided a welcome retreat from the blazing sun, yet the open vistas were equally spectacular.
Further up the valley we found many barrels and beaver tails in bloom. 
We saw a few other members of the cactus family along the trail, looking just as thorny as ever... 
Little water falls built up small pools along the trail that were all too inviting. 
Heading out, I tried to get a shot that could show just how big these palms were, but they really are too big to properly get into the shot!
From here, we drove to Anza-Borrego to find a place to camp. We stopped at the AM-PM to scrub the windshield and grad a frosty mango slurpee with a color quite similar to these sunset skies I captured from our camp as the sun was going down. 
As we were driving in to the park, ocotillos were ablaze as far as the eye could see! Here's a little bit of zoom so you can see the ocotillo silhouette in the distance. 
The drive along Calcite Road to our campsite was an adventure in and of itself. Super steep sections, lots of boulders, and more blind corners than you'd care to know about. Luckily there aren't many cars to compete with on a road like this.
This past weekend, Sean and I heading out to Palm Springs and the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to hike around and see wildflowers. After a long traffic enhanced drive out to Palm Springs on Friday, we settled in to the very cool Pepper Tree Inn located just a mile or so away from the road that leads up the to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. It was dark by the time we arrived, so we checked in and then headed over to an entertainment center called The River at Rancho Mirage for dinner at PF Chang's. Three appetizers and brown rice to share goes a long way at PF Chang's. I wish there was a PF Chang's closer to home.
A nice feature of the hotel was a 24hour outdoor salt water pool. There was a spa too, yet not salt water. A warm swim in the pool before bed helps you sleep like a baby.
The hotel provided some breakfast items, but nothing substantial enough to fuel us for our anticipated hike in the snow above Palm Springs in the Mount San Jacinto State Park on Saturday, so we headed over to Cheeky's next door.
There was about a 20 minute wait for a table, so we took a walk up the street and took some pictures of the interesting art installations.
Cheeky's is very popular, and it's easy to see why. Tap water comes in a pretty bottle and maple syrup is served in a little metal container shaped like a log cabin.
The menu was filled with familiar breakfast items, each one with an interesting twist. I tried the bacon's flight which consisted of 5 different flavors of bacon and two eggs. Sean had the egg sandwich, and we both shared a blueberry corn pancake. Doesn't it all look great?!
I'm not sure what time we actually ended up on the road to the tram, but it certainly wasn't "early". No worries though, we were excited to be on our way.
It was interesting to see the reaction of so many tourists riding on the shuttle between the parking lot and the tram when the driver announced 32 degree temperatures and several feet of snow awaiting us at the station at the top. Most people were dressed in shorts and t-shirts, perfect for the desert below.
The first part of the ride looks much like hot rocky desert....
but that quickly gives way to glistening white snow around big pine trees with dusty hot Palm Springs way down below.
The tram rotates as it travels up and down the mountain. If you haven't taking a ride up to the top, we highly recommend it. We got a little discount from our hotel, but you can usually get the same discount with AAA. You can order tickets online, but I think you can only get the discount when purchasing tickets at the station. Getting out discount through the hotel saved us the time of waiting in line at the station. You'll find lots of Palm Springs hotels offering tram packages.
While there was lots of snow, it was pretty icy. I'd never walked on snow for more than a minute before and it took some getting used to. Luckily I had poles to keep me from slipping around. I was a little afraid, but as you can see, Sean was so excited!
Wait for me!
We never did find the ski hut to rent snow shoes, but we were somewhat fine without them. We didn't hike to the peak because we didn't have enough daylight, but we did make it around the nature trail and the desert view trail. A nice jumble of rocks overlooking the valley below made a great lunch stop.
This little guy couldn't wait for us to leave some crumbs behind.
After lunch, we started to climb up a hill to find a geocache, but I chickened out. Every so often I'd either slip and slide out of control, or sink down several feet which I think is called post-holing. I opted to take a nap at the bottom of the hill until Sean got back to show me how to make a snow angel:
We were there for several hours, but we didn't really travel all that far in comparison to our regular hikes back home in Santa Barbara. The cold and elevation wiped us out but the views were totally worth it.
On the way back down, I snapped a shot of the other other tram car on it's way up. If you look closely, you can see a guy taking photos of us as we're trying to do the same thing.
Back down in Palm Springs, the temperatures were mild and the moon was just coming up.
We could also see lots of windmills on the way down too.
Back down from the mountain, we walked around downtown Palm Springs, had a bite to eat at a Thai restaurant and then headed back for our last night at the Pepper Tree Inn. Perhaps the elevation from the hike earlier that day zapped both of us because we were dead asleep within minutes.
It was hard to leave our little desert paradise the next morning. We would have arranged the trip the other way around with the Pepper Tree Inn stay after the camping portion of our trip, but the forecast predicted high winds in Anza-Borrego for Friday and Saturday. Desert wildflower viewing and wind don't mix, so we decided to wait it out in Palm Springs.
Up at dawn, Theresa and I showered and went out to the dock on the lake with a very sleepy Peter trailing behind us. We were told that we could see the hippos going back out into the lake if we arrived around 6:00am.
Here's the view from right outside our hotel room:
A little hard to see, but they are out there:
There were already some tourists out there. We didn't stay long and before you knew it, Peter had climbed down from the dock and was walking along the "at your own risk beyond this point" shore while Theresa and I took a quick stroll around the property just to check things out before heading back to the lobby to arrange a bird watching walk with Joseph.
We had tea and coffee while waiting for our guide and then toured the property in search of birds and interesting plants to photograph.
This place really has it all. There's a camel on the property for those who want to ride along the lake shore and there are also stables for those interested in traditional horseback riding.
The property is beautifully landscaped and you'll see bougainvilleas in every imaginable color.
There were even cute little monkeys running around everywhere (although we weren't thinking they were so cute when they were screaming just before dawn),
and lots of birds of course...
...even ducks that like to live way up high in the trees:
After a fantastic buffet breakfast complete with an omlette and crepe station, we loaded up our boxed lunches and hit the road for Nakura around 10am. We quickly discovered some issues with the rental car, so we stopped at a gas station and discovered what turned out to be a major issue: snapped fan belt which sheered off some bolts in the process along with overheating and either a broken or missing radiator cap!
Luckily there was a welder within walking distance (or pushing distance) of the service station. Unfortunately, there was a little hill big enough to require a small village of men to push the Prado up the driveway onto the road.
We were there (back and forth between the service station and the welders) from 10:30am until 4pm. It was amazing to find something open on a Sunday and equally amazing to see them fix the car without all of the usual gadgetry you find in the states at our shops.
Theresa and I were having a great time, covertly snapping photos of everything including this family of four that stopped by the station to gas up.
We walked down to a hotel called the Sweet Banana to take a photo, but chickened out when we saw a man leering down at us from the upstairs patio. We passed one of those crazy butcher shops too, but again, no photos were snapped.
Back at the gas station, we found a little boy named Ben to play with. He and his mother were their waiting for Samuel, one of the mechanics who was working on our car.
Give a little kid some chips coupled with the fact that Theresa was probably the first white person he'd ever seen, and you've definitely made a friend for life.
Ben was ridiculously cute. We took lots of pictures and I got their address so I could mail them some prints. We were finally off to Nakura National Park!
Of course, we arrived much later than expected, and were nearly denied entry into the park. Peter always knows how to handle these situations. Before you knew it, the largest expanse of flamingos you could ever imagine appeared before us.
The sun was going down quickly, but we did get a chance to see a stunning rainbow, grazing animals, and even a rare white rhino!
From high above, we spotted this white rhino heading towards a watering hole.
Peter snapped this picture of Theresa and I. We are only a little bit exhausted...
Of course, only a crazy Kenyan would rush down the road to the valley below to get a close up of such a large wild animal...
At this point, we headed out of Nakuru and back to Nairobi. By this time, we were so used to the crazy drivers and arbitrary check points, nothing phased us.
For $10, you get quite the breakfast selection and you can have as much as you like. We had no idea what to expect. If you Google this place, you'll find quite the range of reviews. The patio was nice and shady, and the food and service were totally fine. Sure it's not anything like Cheeky's and their haute breakfast offerings, but the Rock Garden Cafe had plenty of appeal.
There was a fire through here in the '80s, but palms are remarkably resilient. The first bunch on this particular trail are just down the hill from the Trading Post.
Lots of brittle bush on the way down, or at least I think this is brittle bush... 
This particular palm is bound and determined to get some sun...
Pretty pink mallows 
...and these purple guys that look like fireworks shooting out of their middles...
Each palm oasis provided a welcome retreat from the blazing sun, yet the open vistas were equally spectacular.
Further up the valley we found many barrels and beaver tails in bloom. 
We saw a few other members of the cactus family along the trail, looking just as thorny as ever... 
Little water falls built up small pools along the trail that were all too inviting. 
Heading out, I tried to get a shot that could show just how big these palms were, but they really are too big to properly get into the shot! 
From here, we drove to Anza-Borrego to find a place to camp. We stopped at the AM-PM to scrub the windshield and grad a frosty mango slurpee with a color quite similar to these sunset skies I captured from our camp as the sun was going down. 
As we were driving in to the park, ocotillos were ablaze as far as the eye could see! Here's a little bit of zoom so you can see the ocotillo silhouette in the distance. 
The drive along Calcite Road to our campsite was an adventure in and of itself. Super steep sections, lots of boulders, and more blind corners than you'd care to know about. Luckily there aren't many cars to compete with on a road like this.
