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San Jacinto Mountains from La Quinta with Moon

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The San Jacinto Mountains from La Quinta Resort at sunrise, with the full moon setting over the peaks
The San Jacinto Mountains from La Quinta Resort, just after sunrise, with the full moon setting over the peaks.

The La Quinta Resort is located in the low desert of the Coachella Valley, California, about 20 miles southeast of Palm Springs. The western side of the resort is framed by the San Jacinto Mountains, which are starkly bare — no tree line softening the rock, just raw stone rising straight out of the desert floor. My stay there coincided with a full moon, and this photo was taken at around 7:20am, not long after the sun had risen and just before the moon set. The newly risen sun behind me cast a beautiful warm red glow over the mountains.

What I liked most about staying at La Quinta — and it's worth saying again, since it's the thing that sets the resort apart — is that the accommodations are clustered in small groups around private pools rather than built around one or two large central ones. There's something like 50 pools scattered across the property, so you're rarely more than a short walk from water, and never sharing it with more than a handful of other guests. We actually had the pool to ourselves most of the time. 

We stayed in one of the condos rather than the more standard hotel-style rooms, and I'd recommend doing the same if it's within budget. The condo came fully equipped — kitchen, living space, the works — which made a real difference for a longer stay. The hotel-style rooms are the cheaper option and perfectly serviceable if you're just passing through for a night or two, but the condos are the better experience if you can manage it, especially for anyone planning to settle in for a few days rather than just passing through.

For more on the resort itself — including its private, uncrowded pools — see my post on the pools at La Quinta Resort.

No affiliation: I have no affiliate or sponsorship relationship with La Quinta Resort and have not received any compensation, discounted stay, or complimentary accommodation in connection with this post. This is simply an account of a trip I paid for myself.

Canon EOS 20D
Canon 18-55mm lens at 33mm
1/80 secs at f/16
ISO 400
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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