Palm Springs

Last week we took a vacation to Palm Springs. It was our winter "reading week," which is just a winter break week. Winter is long here, and a lot of people take vacations to warm places. This was a relatively last-minute (for us) decision to go, but we decided that we needed to get out of the cold briefly.

This was our first time traveling anywhere with Maren. It was her first flight,

and she did very well. There were other babies who cried much more than she did, so we felt lucky to have a good little traveler. What she did not like was long car rides in the rental car. Anything over a few minutes long, or after about 2:30 PM, was not to her liking. We tried lots of things, including having me ride in the back with her, but it was mostly futile. She cried and cried during many car rides. One thing that did help was singing a specific song called "if I had the wings of an aeroplane" which I learned at camp when I was quite young. For some reason this song and no other had the capacity to calm her down, at least temporarily.

Despite the difficulties with driving, we did lots of fun things during our visit. We took an aerial tram to the top of Mount San Jacinto,

visited Joshua Tree National Park,

went to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens,

went swimming in our hotel's outdoor pool, and generally enjoyed the warm weather (which was unusually warm with highs in the eighties and nineties).

Overall it was a lovely vacation. We learned some things about traveling with Maren, and until things change, we will probably avoid long car rides with her :-) But it was wonderful to leave winter behind even if it was only for a few days.