This morning, we attended Torah Study and services at Shir Hadash, almost as easily as if we’d been at home.

After services, it seemed like the most appropriate place to eat would be a Jewish deli – all of the friends we’d visited on the trip had praised Sherman’s Deli in Palm Springs, so we drove there and had a nice meal. We arrived at the tail end of the lunch rush; they offered immediate seating inside or “soon” outside, and we went for the inside seating. It was a lot more crowded than the place we ate yesterday! The food was better, too – Diane and I split a Reuben and a piece of cheesecake.

We’d made reservations at the Palm Springs Art Museum and arrived five minutes before our time slot. They took our temperature and scanned our tickets, but I don’t think they looked at the time. We’d been at the museum on our previous visit, so we concentrated on the temporary exhibits. There were two with Agnes Pelton paintings (one of her landscapes and one of her Transcendentalist paintings) and one called “Gerald Clarke: Falling Rocks”. Clarke is an Native American artist whose works use “humor and wit to expose historical and present-day injustice” – I really liked the exhibit.

Downtown Palm Springs was hopping – except for masks, you really wouldn’t have thought anything unusual was happening. Restaurants were busy, people were talking and walking, and it was a lively scene indeed. It was hot and we were thirsty, so we stopped at the first place we saw that said they sold water – it was a head shop, Can Be Done Well! They had a cooler full of unenhanced beverages, and the person behind the counter was friendly – what’s not to like?

There’s construction going on in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Actually, it’s NOT going on – the area was excavated a while ago and is being used for art installations until the construction proceeds further. The biggest installation is David ÄŒerný’s “Crawling Babies” – it is certainly an eye-catcher!

We spent today at one of our favorite places, Joshua Tree National Park. The NPS website warned against possible long lines at the Joshua Tree and 29 Palms entrances, so we drove east on I-10 and entered at Cottonwood, where there was no line at all. We stopped at the Visitor Center and took a short walk, then drove north on Pinto Basin Road, stopping frequently for photos.

Three hours later, we left the park for lunch in 29 Palms – Yelp guided us to Andreas Char-Broiled Burgers, which we’d chosen because it offered outdoor dining and bison burgers. The outdoor dining was a choice of picnic tables in the sun – on the other hand, the restaurant itself was air conditioned and almost empty, so we had our first indoor restaurant meal in more than 403 days in what I can confidently describe as “less than splendor”. But the food was OK and the people were cheerful and helpful and it was clean and we’d been vaccinated so it was all fine.

After lunch, we went back into the park at the 29 Palms entrance and drove along Park Blvd to get to the Joshua Tree exit, stopping frequently for photos.

Once we left the park, we drove to Windmill Market in North Palm Springs for a date shake and then back to the hotel – there were no photo stops.

It was a very good day.