As the saying goes, so many books, so little time. Picking out your favorite book would be akin to picking out your favorite child. Each has its own unique character. We’ve always had a special affinity for older books. Where words took center stage, not glaring, over-edited photos. Their crafty use of language painted vivid
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We get asked quite often, “How do you find all the places you write about?” Here’s our secret. It’s all about guidebooks. Some armchair experts may try to tell you how challenging it is to get to a particular site, but if you have the right information about how to get there and what to
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Newberry Springs, California, is known for Newberry Cave, its former private lakes where water skiing stars like Esther Williams once trained and where one of the largest population of Tricolored Blackbirds on the West Coast gather, but it has another reputation about how the Mojave River engulfs houses near its riverbed and how a tragic
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We had an amazing adventure exploring lovely Afton Canyon. The Mojave River flows above ground here and ranges from a small creek to a couple of feet deep depending on seasonal rainfall totals. Afton Canyon lies in part along the old Mojave Indian Trail, near the 35th parallel, that extended from the Colorado River to
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The desert has often played an important role in religions, spiritual enlightenment and artists seeking the esoteric. A half-mile past the turnoff to Pioneertown Road in Yucca Valley, 40 larger-than-life biblical statues from the mid-century rise from the rocky sandscape to offer a peaceful place for contemplation and renewal. It all started when Reverend Eddie
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The Cabot Pueblo Museum is temporarily closed to the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Please check the museum’s website (below) for current information about closures before you go. It is a given that when researching information about a particular topic, one discovery often leads to another. Such is the case when we recently wrote
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Sometimes you pick up tips in the darnedest of places. A few weeks ago we were at our veterinarian’s office to get one of our dogs his routine vaccines, and began discussing interesting local places to explore with the vet, a long-time resident of the area. The doc asked us if we’d heard of Coyote
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There once was a time at least 2,000 years ago, when the only voices heard in the desert below Mount San Jacinto were those of the Cahuilla people. At a time when the Roman Empire ruled over most of Europe and the Middle East, the Cahuillas lived here in relative peace. The Romans are gone,
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The fearless explorers walk along the trail. Quiet. Ever on the lookout for desert flora and fauna. Suddenly, as they round the bend, they come face-to-face with a world of beauty in the guise of the Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium, just down the street from a good cup of espresso on Palm Canyon Drive.
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Malki Museum is temporarily closed due to Covid-19. Please check their website for the latest information about reopening. Malki Museum, housed in a traditional one-room adobe building on the Morongo Reservation in Banning, California, is a walk through time, displaying in all its grandeur the history and culture of the Cahuilla (spoken as: ‘Caw-we-ah’) Native
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