One more hike for 2010…

Turned out to be a great day to end off 2010 here in the Desert! 

We were all up and at it early this morning, with plans in place for a hike! 

We chose the Garstin Trail, climbing up Smoke Tree Mountain,  which is part of the San Jacinto Mountains, right in Palm Springs.  The info we had on the trail indicated about 4 miles, but it was more like 6 by the time we were done…

Tom and Cheryl are getting geared up out of the trunk of the Budget rent a Mercury…

Right from the get go you are climbing…  check out the house in the background, with the nice pool and green grass…

The trailhead was in a very posh neighbourhood, and you can see this home was right into solar panels… probably off grid…

We were right near a real nice golf course…

The rookies were taking a break…

Group shot!

All the way up this mountain, we had great views of the whole area… this is looking south.

This guy buzzed by and was checking us out…

Great shot of Palm Springs, Mount Jacinto  on the left.

We were starting to get up there… forgot the batteries for my hand held GPS, so no idea how high we climbed… over 1,000 feet I think…

Don’t have a clue what we were looking at, but it had to be something…

We met these bikers at the top, and they were just getting ready to depart…

The stars and stripes were planted at the top.

Love the blue sky today…

We started down the back side of the mountain, and found this nice sub-division.  The big house you see with the big roof, belonged to Bob and Delores Hope when they were alive.  Don’t know who owns it now…

We had great views of the whole area, right down to the Salton Sea.  No smog in the air today!

Almost down, we found these Cowboys, or girls…

We ended up in the hot tubs of course, to ease the pain of it all, and finished off the year with a nice steak dinner on the BBQ.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our readers, and here is to a great 2011…

Till tomorrow…