In the desert now and enjoying it immensely. The wonderful air and the mountains looming round with the sun creating alll sorts of affects at various times of the day make me feel very inspired to paint. I won't have time to do it now on this short trip but will take lots of pictures. The first night we had booked here ended up to be a major truck stop so was very noisy with all the rigs coming and going every night. Also ended up to be difficult to get a place since it's the President's Day weekend and Valentine's (seems to be almost a national holiday around here!). However we did get into a new place in Palm Desert, the Hilton Garden Inn, and have a lovely suite here which also has free ethernet connection so it will be easy to post to the blog, do email, and also check out places to rent for a longer period of time down here for future years.

We had dinner last night with one of my Victoria golfing buddies, Claire, and her husband, Tom. It was really fun to see them and we're all going to play a Par 3 course this afternoon. Lots of wonderful golf courses here but also reasonable golf. Claire and Tom do a lot of hiking and that looks pretty interesting as well.