night divides the day

i really shouldn't get as excited as i did over breakfast at international house of pancakes.(signed pics of ice cube on the wall!!) sadly, it insists on being called "ihop" now. *sigh* for the uninitiated, it's a giant american chain of restaurants and it has yummy yummy pancakes and omelets. mmmm.... so far, it's been the best food i've had when i've been out to "dine" in palm springs. there has just got to be better food in america than the dry and abused and salty eggplant parmesana i had at tony's pasta mia (signed pics of sinatra on the wall!!), or the slimy veggie burger i had at coco's. (no signed pics on the wall, what's wrong with them, don't they understand where they are located??)

a few days ago my dad and i piled in the rental suv and drove our asses off to get to a place called the salton sea. the website, if you go to it, is far more impressive than the damned sea is itself. it took several hours of driving though the desert to come to a smelly stagnant body of water with an insane salt content (25% more salty than ocean water). apparently there are many many birds that come to this lake. i saw a bunch of gulls. what else can i tell you... uhm... the water is red.... seriously, it's red - i did not alter this picture.

the other thing i can tell you about the salton sea is that there were people camping there. why there? i do not know... it smelled, was hot and there was nothing much to see. and someone camping there once apparently does not care for president bush... this is a picture that i took in the loo. heehee. just so you know, i don't make it a habbit to pull out the old digital in the washrooms of the world.


the next day was spent in a more picturesque location.... the living desert in palm desert. it has a mini-zoo with giraffe's, cougars, zebra's and scary wild african dogs. there was something just so primal about them. i felt an uncomfortable thrill deep in my core when i looked at them. everything about them screamed predator. they moved very quickly and seemed to have an economy of motion that would lend itself well to a killing attack. *shiver* then last night as i was falling asleep i heard wild coyotes howling - which of course made me a little afraid of the african wild dogs! i just held my jim morrison book tighter!

i have also talked my dad into making the 5 hour drive up to death valley. i have no idea what we will see there, but ever since i was a little girl, i loved the name death valley. probably because it had the word death in it and i was always a touch morbid - still am. monday morning i'll be getting up at 5:00am and will be hauling my cookies several hours north. the thing i like about it the most is that my dad hasn't been there yet either. and when we go places he's been before he tends to want to re-create the last time he went (on the way to the salton sea, we stopped in a little dust-trap of a town called brawley, only because last time he went to the salton sea, he stopped in brawley. you get the picture.)

speaking of getting the picture - here's the latest installment of my photo-travel-log.

the very scary african wild dog. it was staring over at the gate. like it was trying to reason a way out.

the exhibit had 3 giraffe's and apparently we were lucky that these ones were so close to us. seems they like to hide behind some of the hills in their enclosure.

a huge part of the living desert was the cactus gardens... there were literally 100's of different types of cacti.

a simulated "oasis" of giant california fan palms. these trees had trunks about 3 feet wide and grew quite tall. the stuff you see that looks very much like shaggy mammoth fur is actually old palm fronds - which provides a lot of shade for those seeking refuge from the hot desert sun.

final picture tonight is of a female mountain cougar. between she and me was a glass barrier. she was really quite beautiful - i had no idea cougars' eyes bugged out quite so much.

[music | the doors, "love me two times"]