Hiking is the joy of Fehr..

...or sometimes not so much - but more on that later 😉 On our second day in Palm Springs, we took the Aerial Tramway up to Mt. San Jacinto. From just under 700m to about 2600m in nearly 10 minutes. And then the gondola spins around its own axis so you won't miss any of the amazing views, sensational. The 'animation' during the ride was back to 'Ami-Style' with many funny (or not) sayings and 'Bye Bye Miss American Pie' at full volume. Lots of 'Ohs', 'Ahs', etc. were murmured by the fellow passengers. Especially at tower 3, when it swayed a bit. As Swiss mountain lift professionals, we could only smile mildly 😉 At the end, there was applause 'for oneself' because we made it up - with the gondola, yay.. 😉

Up there, it was really cold. And suddenly a completely different landscape: down in Palm Springs desert, up in mountain forests with beautiful, huge pines! Naturally, we had brought along all our clothes and jackets, but the wind was quite biting at 2600m and snow was still visible in the shade 🥶 After the boys picked up their Junior Ranger booklet (available in every park, and when completed, they earn a badge/pin as Junior Ranger of that park, super cool!), we were off. We aimed to hike about 1 hour to the 'hidden lake', picnic there, and return. Seemed easy. But son number 2 was anything but 'amused' and screamed for about 30 minutes through the beautiful pine forest. Only the warning that a ranger might mistake him for a rabid mountain lion helped a bit 😉 We didn't quite make it to the lake because son number 3 was sure he would freeze in the next 2 minutes. Number 1 was very frustrated because he thought it was great and really wanted to continue. Oh well..

At some point, we found our way back to the gondola station and went down again into the warmth.

The next day, we left our wonderful Hot Springs camping and headed to Joshua Tree National Park. We aimed to do at least three little hikes - hoping for more cooperative kids 😉 Again, we quickly got the Junior Ranger Pass at the entrance and off we went. Today, fortunately, everyone was 'fully on board' and excited about the amazing landscape with its diverse rock formations, blooming cacti, and Joshua Trees - simply incredibly beautiful 😍

After various small hikes in this fantastic national park, we drove for a little over 2 hours to Needles. This campsite also had a pool (great cooling at 28 degrees) and even 4 swings - what more could you want 😉

Now we continue towards the Grand Canyon - there the jacket will also be in front again, because at night it should be about 3 degrees 🥶