President Eisenhower credited the C-47 Skytrain as one of the seven weapons that won World War II. It was a very effective way to move cargo. It is presently the largest airplane that Palm Springs Air Museum flies. We decided to get up close and personal. The teardrop object under the pilot’s window is a…
At the northwest corner of Waalew Road and Dale Evans Parkway in Apple Valley, just across the road from the Los Ranchos Mobile Home Park, is a vacant piece of desert with a few cement foundations and a smattering of trees near Bell Mountain. Next time you drive by there you might want to know…
On March 2, 2023, we woke to the appearance of a tiny visitor, just outside our front door. This girl has set up nesting duties in our Ocotillo in a pot near our front entrance. The Trochilidae family includes the world’s smallest birds, with the most brilliant iridescent colors, the fastest wingbeats, and the most amazing…
Twentynine Palms Museum is housed in the oldest public building still in use in the Morongo Basin and provides visitors a chance to experience a 1920s era schoolroom. Townsfolk moved the city’s unique 1927 one-room school building to National Park Drive and redesigned the building to wind up as the Old Schoolhouse Museum. The Campbell…
It’s a cool desert evening on November 18, 1954, and the day’s show is over at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the emerging Las Vegas Strip. Still, the show must always go on. The young entertainer, along with his valet, Charles Head, are getting ready for an all-night drive to Studio City, near…
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…
On February 16, 1867, the quiet expanse of Rabbit Springs Dry Lake in Lucerne Valley erupted with vengeance. Three years after the Las Flores massacre, another clash flared. What followed was less a battle than a sudden strike: a posse of settlers descended on a small Indigenous band—likely Serrano—wrongly believed to be Southern Paiute (Chemehuevi)…
Greetings from Camp Cady, California! Armistice Day (later to be named Veterans Day) is still about 60 years away, but here we are, taking you back in time to the loneliest, meanest U.S. Army outpost in the United States, a year before the Civil War went hot. It is a day in 1860, and we’re…
Let’s face it. Most of us would rather be exploring somewhere in the desert in the middle of nowhere. As often happens, one discovery leads to others then suddenly, you must know more. Here’s when good books comes in handy. We’ve pulled a few favorites out of our crowded bookshelf to share. Whenever possible, we’ve…
“The Gubler family has loved and grown orchids for three generations. Swiss citizen, Hans Gubler, who grew up in a family-owned orchid-growing business, came to America on a Missouri Botanical Gardens scholarship in 1918. He returned to Sweden but emigrated to Temple City, California, in the mid-1950s. Hans bought the Landers nursery in 1975.” ~06…
