Thousand Palms Bike Ride

Yesterday I made some minor fixes to my bike and got it into reasonable riding shape. Not great shape, but reasonable. So I took another ride early this morning. I did not feel like a long ride, so I took the same route as my first Palm Springs ride. Except I went a little further, for a total of 25 miles. By the end of the ride I was still not happy with the way that my bike was riding (more on that later).

On the last leg of the trip, I stopped at the visitor center of the Thousand Palms Park (see picture below). In a previous post, I commented on the huge clumps of palm trees. The visitor center is inside one of these clumps. Years ago, a family lived in this clump. The visitor center was their house. It was interesting to see how they lived. There was a creek running through the clump. The family had dammed the creek and created a small lake. This lake no longer exists, however there were pictures of this beautiful lake in the visitor center.


In my previous post, I was wondered why the palm trees grew this way. It turns out that these clumps lie directly on top of earthquake faults. When an earthquake occurs, the plates shift and water comes up to the surface along the fault line. The palm trees need this water to grow. Furthermore, the fruit from these trees drop directly down next to the trees. Therefore the next generation of trees will grow right next to the previous generation of trees. As time goes on, a large clump of palm trees develop.

The lady in the visitor center told me that there was another lake about 200 yards down a path. She encouraged me to take a look at the lake. I did not want to wander too far, since my bike was left unlocked. I think it would be interesting to come back with my wife and explore the park on foot. She seemed interested, until I mentioned that there was a mountain lion sighting in the area earlier this morning. Not sure why that would be a problem? :-) The 103 degree weather predicted for tomorrow may be a factor as well.


Anyway, I got back on bike to complete my ride. The bike just did not seem to roll very well. Something was not right. I took a careful look at my rear wheel and discovered that one of the spokes was broken! Hunh, I wonder how long I have been riding on a broken spoke? This can not be good! After I got back to the house, I called around and found a bike shop that can fix my bike. So it will go into the shop tomorrow. We'll see how much damage has been done.

It was a fun ride. I like to look for things along the road that interest me and then spend some time exploring. Often I can spend hours just wandering around. I am not sure how interesting this clump of palm trees would be to anyone else, but I enjoyed exploring it. If I did not have an unlocked bike sitting there, I could have spent hours exploring the park. Hmm, if the weather had been a little cooler ...