“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human
spirit"—Edward Abbey
Adventure Hummer Tours lived up to its reputation of being voted the best off road tour in Palm Springs.
We were picked up at 2:15 PM at the Marriott Shadow Ridge in an air-conditioned shuttle by Scott, our assigned tour guide and driver. A mother and her 6 year old child from the East Village in NYC joined us.
Our first stop was at a natural palm oasis in the lower desert, once the center of life of the Cahuilla Indians. It was like taking a step back in time as we witnessed 2 billion year old canyons made of twisted granite. We crossed a wooden bridge that straddled the fault line. We saw a historic cabin built by early Palm Spring Settlers and saw the third largest oasis in the world bubbling up from the ground from a great underground aquifer. We walked between two of the Earth’s gigantic tectonic plates the created the "little" San Bernardino Mountains to our right as well as the mountain in the second photo.
We then drove to the Frontier Cafe in Yucca Valley for a rest top and refreshments. I had a Chai Latte. It exuded a funky hip vibe reminiscent of a place the old beat poets like Jack Kerouac would have hung out at.
Scott, who spent 15 years in the military in Europe, Asia and the Middle East arranged for us to transfer into a bright yellow open air military grade H-1 Hummer that measured 15 feet long, 8 foot wide and weighed 10,000 pounds. We then headed to the backroads of Joshua Tree National Park in the upper desert, home to some of the most beautiful wilderness areas of its kind in the world. We stopped three quarters of the way to climb some of the granite boulders. We proceeded to the summit point at 6,000 feet. There were a few tourists in what essentially was a zone of tranquility. The panoramic vistas were awesome. A Joshua tree is a plant species belonging to the Yucca family, and is native to “Park” that covers a land mass of 790 thousand plus acres, which is slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. The park’s oldest rocks are said to be 1.7 billion years old.
The temperature was dropping and we made our way back to the Hummer. Scott played U2, the Doors and other music for our listening pleasure as we quickly made our descent to the bottom of the mountain as the stunning bright yellowish-orange sun began to set (4 photos).
We stopped back at the Frontier Cafe as we exchanged vehicles and made our way back to our suite about 7 PM, and bid our very capable guide farewell and thanks for a most illuminating and I dare say a spiritual desert experience. We ended the evening with an Italian dinner in our suite and called it a night.
