Palm Desert

I just returned home from a week in the desert, Palm Desert.  I visited my sister, and we drove down to Oceanside and San Diego to see the Visions Exhibit and the show at the Visions Gallery.  Great work and worth the drive.  The desert was beautiful, slightly green since it rained last week.  That's the Salton Sea you can see shining in the distance in the upper right of the photo.

We visited The Living Desert, the Palm Desert zoo.  They have quite a few desert animals and animals from Africa.  You actually can feed the giraffes if you get there right at 10 am.

There are two aviaries you can walk through and also a walk-through butterfly exhibit.

There are lots of odd desert plants and trees in the gardens.

The big arts festival in La Quinta was last week as well.  There are well over 100 vendors - closer to 200 I would guess - showing quality artwork.  American Style Magazine voted La Quinta the 6th best art/craft fair in the country.  It's easy to see why.  The park is shady and beautiful with green grass, water fountains and pools. 

I went to the meeting of the Coachella Valley Quilt Guild and participated in a little quilt show at my sister's condo association.  I met lots of Linda's quilting friends, many from the Portland area!  So now I'm back in the rain with more to come this week.  The ground is saturated here.  Several trees fell in Sunday's wind storm.  The roots can't hang on so well when the ground is so soggy.  We're still waiting for spring.