Hey Actifitters,
For our hiking adventures yesterday, we had two main locations planned. The first one still in Joshua Tree National Park started extremely early as we wanted to see the sunrise from the top of Ryan Mountain. So, after a very short night, we were at the trailhead before 4:30am (the only car there!), ready for the 3 mile round-trip. It's not a long one obviously, but it has some steep sections for a total of 1050 feet elevation gain. In the complete darkness, just with our headlamps, that was a pretty fun start. Very early colors started to show as we climbed up, beautiful!
We arrived at the top with plenty of time before the sunrise, but the colors were already awesome!
And we stayed up there as they changed and it slowly became brighter.
I took a risk and didn't use any photos from the previous hiking days for #AroundTheWorld contest, let's see if that was a good gamble with this one:
Just an extraordinary experience to follow the sunrise from the mountain top!
The other sides showed beautiful pinkish colors as well, and a great view on the valley.
And it finally showed up! The sun fought with a few clouds to rise and it became really bright.
With a view like that, we stayed a little longer, even after daylight was fully here.
And we finally started our descent. It was interesting to see the scenery, as we just couldn't see anything during the ascent.
As you might know, I'm really not a morning person, but getting up early was so worth it for this sunrise, an incredible experience!
On the way to our next stop, we stopped at a small town called Pioneertown. It's supposed to be an old-school far West like kind of town, but I found it mostly cheesy and not very authentic. I don't know, maybe it's just me, because it is usually recommended. Or maybe I was just impatient about the next destination: Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. We arrived there early in the afternoon and took the Tramway up. The ride is about 10 minutes to go from the Valley Station (806m) to the Mountain Station (2596m). Fun ride, especially when passing one of the five towers.
And of course, the view from up there is the best part.
That was obviously not sufficient for us. There's plenty of trails to hike too in the Mount San Jacinto State Park. We opted for some easy ones with the best views.
It started like many other hikes, with the scenery similar to alpine meadows.
But at multiple times, it opens up to views on the valley.
The trails we picked weren't very long but we added again lots of scrambling detours, always searching for the best views. And soon after we were done, it was time to check out the sunset. No direct view of the sunset but beautiful colors over the opposite side, and the Moon as bonus.
Once again, very easy to just get lost in the beauty and we stayed there for quite some time.
The orange colors started to turn into pink ones, and it was our cue to start the journey down.
The ride was even more fun on the descent!
We finished the day in Palm Springs, a nice little town with plenty of bars and restaurants. That was another full day, from sunrise to sunset. Tiring but so great!
As always, thanks for stopping by and see you tomorrow.
[//]:# (!pinmapple 33.79253 lat -116.66655 long d3scr)
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