As I mentioned in my last post, there was lots to do in the Coachella Valley this weekend. We decided to wait until next weekend to do the county fair and Date Fest, but managed to fill our weekend with some good times. The weather this weekend was amazing. Sunny and in the 70’s – just like that cute weather girl promised! As we started out on Saturday we came across (literally) the Tour de Palm Springs – a charity ride that had about 10,000 cyclists. They had been streaming by the house all morning, and by the time we set out, it was quite an impressive sight.

There were so many bikes on the road it was hard to turn left on Thousand Palms Canyon Drive (or ten hundred palm drive as our friendly GPS calls it!) to get to our first destination of the day-The Coachella Valley Preserve. It turns out they have a nice little 2 mile hike that sounded just right for us (especially we hadn’t really dressed to go hiking in the desert!) And while we learned that one of the chief purposes of the preserve is to protect the habitat of a little lizard –

(this probably is NOT the one they are protecting since we saw several of them, but hey, it was the only lizard I could get a picture of!)
we thought that THIS is what is truly spectacular about this preserve –

and this

and this

NOW we know what a desert oasis is really like.
Beautiful!
Back on the road after the hike – lots of bikes heading into Palm Springs!

Our next destination –
The Greek Festival at St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church.

Some great Greek food –

(these are the loukoumades. Mmmmmmm)
A little impromptu Greek Dancing –

and a tour of the Church –

The art in the dome was done all in 1/2 inch mosaic tiles. Very impressive.

The rest of the day was spent doing errands – and just basically enjoying the lovely day!

And today, Valentine’s Day? We exchanged some really expensive gifts this year – Gary got me two new tires for the truck, and I got him the other two. I mean, really, how romantic was that?!

Follow