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52 Hikes, Part 2: Covid-safe family hiking in Palm Springs (and beyond!)

February 28, 2021

This year I set a goal of taking 52 different hikes with my family. You can read Part 1 here, which is about our 11 hikes in January.

That brings us to February, one of the best hiking months in Palm Springs. It’s post-holidays, so the trails aren’t crawling with people, and it’s pre-summer, so the trails aren’t crawling with rattlesnakes. Perfection!

Here are the 8 hikes we did this month.

Keep in mind:
• These hikes are family-friendly, meaning they were good for my family. They are not necessarily stroller accessible or toddler-friendly.
• I’m strategic about when and where I hike. Some popular trails get heavy traffic throughout the day, and I don’t feel comfortable on narrow paths with people who might not be wearing masks. So I go early or late.
• Don’t take my distance as gospel. Hiking with a 6-year-old child involves a fair amount of wandering, so your mileage might vary.
• Do check check a website like AllTrails for current trail conditions. I always look the map to get an idea of the terrain, and I read the most recent comments for any relevant info.
• Please wear a mask when you encounter others on the trail.

North Lykken to Falls View, Palm Springs • 6 miles

We accessed this via the trailhead on Cielo Road, which is located in my favorite Palm Springs neighborhood. From here the journey appears so charming and not at all like the brutal killer it is.

I kid. Kind of.

After a quick but steep climb, the trail leads you through Chino Canyon, which is an isolated and tranquil part of Palm Springs. It’s particularly dreamy when wildflowers are in bloom and the whole canyon looks like a screensaver.

Okay, here’s the killer part: The hike was pleasant out through the canyon but surprisingly strenuous on the return. I partially attribute this to a lack of snacks and an unseasonably warm February day, but wow. Just watch out for that. We should have turned back long before I turned into a hangry goblin.

Lake Calavera Loop, Oceanside • 4.3 miles

We spent Presidents’ Day weekend in a remote yurt, which was wonderful and gave us new places to explore.

I really loved this trail system because it was a great mix of well-maintained, easy trails and wilderness with rock scrambling and overgrown parts. Also you can’t beat the excellent view from the top.

However, so few people were wearing masks that I wondered if Oceanside had defeated the virus and didn’t tell anyone.

The trail had heavy traffic at the beginning and end, but we were able to maintain good distance on offshoot trails in between.

Los Jilgueros Loop, Fallbrook • 1.2 miles

A quick loop around a sweet nature preserve. It seemed to be a popular place for birders.

Roadrunner/Chuckwalla Loop, Rancho Mirage • 3.1 miles

A picturesque trail system that ambles through the mountains around the Ritz Carlton — a five-star view for free!

Aside: We didn’t make that rock heart that you see in the photo, because I teach Everest to leave only footprints. But he was happy to stumble upon it!

Araby Trail, Palm Springs • 3 miles

This trail takes you past the Bob Hope home, a mushroomy modernist masterpiece, and into the hills beyond the residence. It’s so fun, especially in the spring when the hills are lush and verdant. Also it holds some surprises. I won’t spoil them for you.

Continue toward Berns Trail Lookout for a longer loop, which we did not do.

North Lykken Loop, Palm Springs • 1.4 miles

There are a lot of ways to access the Lykken in Palm Springs. For this hike, we used the trailhead on Ramon Road, and it was an entirely different experience than the North Lykken loop we hiked earlier in the month.

My son had such a great time here, because there were dozens of offshoot trails to explore, outcroppings to climb, and plenty of adventures to be had. Plus there are spectacular views of downtown Palm Springs throughout. We didn’t cover much distance, but we spent a few hours having the best time.

We could have continued this hike north, where it meets up with the Museum Trail. Instead we followed the map on AllTrails to make this a true loop, ascending via the steep dirt trail and returning on the stone “road.”

South Lykken, Palm Springs • 3.6 miles

I personally refer to this as Middle Lykken, because there’s another South Lykken trailhead at Oswit Canyon.

This is my very favorite trail in Palm Springs, because it’s both challenging but rewarding, and it’s always spectacular. Over the past few years, it’s rare to hike here and not see bighorn sheep, although you might have to keep your eyes peeled. (Other times, they walk right across the trail!)

Note: There’s no parking at the trailhead, so park on Mesquite close to Palm Canyon, near the Happy Traveler RV Park, and walk up the street until it dead-ends at the mountain.

Pushawalla Palms Loop, Coachella Valley Preserve • 4.6 miles

This trail is like traveling through an actual metaphor — you have to trudge through the desert to get to an oasis.

Multiple oases, to be accurate.

Follow a slender ridge along the top of a bluff before descending to the Pushawalla Palms grove on the desert floor. This is a cool oasis with water that has been brought to the surface from the San Andreas Fault.

Along the way back, you’ll pass through another collection of full-skirted palms and see even more water. Here we had a snack, lolled in the shade from the trees, and watched a flock of Gambel’s quail skitter about — a respite from the rest of the world.

Conversations with a Preschooler on Death and Dying

April 9, 2019

This morning Everest and I took a walk and passed a sweet little cemetery in downtown Palm Springs. He immediately scrambled up the stone wall that surrounds the cemetery, positioned himself to hop down, and declared his intention to pick a flower for me. A flower from a grave.

He’s never seen a cemetery before, so he didn’t know. I shouted “No no no no no!” Then I explained to him what this place is, and how we respect the dead. We don’t touch monuments or headstones. We don’t stand on a burial place. And we never, ever pick the flowers.

He climbed off the wall and ran to my side.

“There are dead people there?”

Yes, I said. He and I talk about death a lot, which I didn’t expect to do with a preschooler. But our cat died a couple years ago, and Ev always has questions about that, and we talk about my mom, who is dead.

I try to be very clear and straightforward about this: There is no rainbow bridge in our conversations. I don’t use any euphemisms or evasive language. And I don’t promise him an afterlife. There is simply the body, which is buried or cremated, and the memories, which live on.

He asked more questions about the cemetery: Who are the people buried there? Will I be buried there? Will he be buried there? Why are they under the ground? And as I answered him, I mentally congratulated myself on this healthy conversation about death and dying and how well I had explained everything.

“It’s just weird,” Ev said as we walked away.

“What is, baby?”

“How all those people died right there. And in a line too.”

My grave error

October 11, 2018

Ever had one of those conversations in which you know you’re saying the wrong thing — you feel yourself saying the absolute worst words — but you can’t stop yourself? It’s like when you’re headed for a car crash and time becomes stretchy and slow, but it’s too late. You’re already on a trajectory.

That’s what happened recently when I watched Coco with my 4-year-old son, Everest. We’ve seen the movie before, but this was the first time that he fully realized the skeletons were dead people. Of course he had questions — and that’s when a car crash spilled out of my mouth.

E: Are they really dead? Like dead dead?

ME: Oh, yes. Dead like our cat.

E: Dead like Kung Pao? … Why did they die?

ME: Well, everybody dies.

E: EVERYBODY DIES?

ME: Yes.

E: Even me?

ME: Yes, even you. But don’t worry. I’ll probably die a long time before you.

I can’t even count the number of therapy appointments Everest will eventually have based on that one conversation.

It didn’t phase him too much in the moment, but he’s 4. Sometimes it takes him days to process something, and then seemingly out of nowhere he’ll say, “Wait. So tigers DON’T lay eggs?” So I fully expect him to circle back to this at a very inappropriate time: “What do you mean I’m going to die like my cat?!?”

Most likely this will happen in a public space.

A confession: The biggest mistake I’ve made as a parent (so far)

June 28, 2018

If I’d just purchased pretzel twists instead of pretzel sticks, we never would have had a problem.

Here’s what happened instead.

Everest whined for a snack, and I tossed a bag of pretzel sticks to him in the backseat. Not the healthiest snack, to be sure. Also maybe not the safest to have in the car. But it was a 40-minute drive from our house to the child care facility, and that can feel like 40 days when a child is profoundly unhappy.

“Mommy, look!” he called to me from the backseat.

I didn’t want to look because I was driving.

“Look,” he urged. “It’s our savior.”

At that point, I LOOKED.

Everest held two pretzel sticks in the air, arranged like a lopsided X, more like a cross.

“Our savior,” he said again.

You know when you get a migraine and your vision sparkles and blurs at the edges, and the world becomes sharp and throbbing? It was like that, but rage. A ragegraine.

“Our savior?” I said. “Where did you learn that?”

“At school.”

White hot rage with a little bit of blue fire at the center.

I want my child to learn about Christianity eventually — I believe it’s a necessary foundation to understand a lot of literature, art, history, so on — but I want him to learn it in the context of other world religions.

“Our savior,” Everest repeated. “I like our savior.”

Honestly, I had hoped to delay this part of parenting. I don’t feel equipped to teach my child about religion, because I continue to struggle with spirituality myself. My own belief system is constantly in flux — currently a bizarre Buddhist Hindu Quaker amalgam, informed by a childhood steeped in the Lutheran church, plus a dash of Catholicism. And I was furious that someone forced me into that situation when I wasn’t ready.

“What do it mean?” Everest asked, and I didn’t have any answers.

Just a few months earlier, our beloved cat passed away. Everest struggled with the concept of death and continued to ask about Kung Pao Kitten daily. How could I possibly explain what the cross symbolizes without having another difficult conversation about what it means to suffer and die?

From the school parking lot, I contacted a few parents who also had children in that class, and I told them about the “our savior” thing. They were shocked — but they insisted their children never said anything even remotely similar.

Then I tried to casually discuss it with the teacher: “Everest said the funniest thing today … do you know where he could have picked that up?”

After the teacher denied having any religious discussions in the classroom, I had a meeting with the school director, who also assured me that the facility is religion-free.

He must have learned it from another kid, I decided.

“I bet it was that asshole Beckett*,” I texted to a friend.

On the way home that afternoon, Everest said it again. And again, I stewed.

I brought my child to school the following day, but it was only to gather his things. We’d had enough. There were other issues, so it wasn’t entirely about “our savior” — when Everest moved from the toddler ladybug room to the older geckos, he never really warmed up to his new teacher. Several items of his clothing went missing. Twice he came home wearing some other kid’s underwear. And once that asshole Beckett called me a “sick pervert” for giving Everest a kiss goodbye.

So I pulled Everest from the school.

We found a new school, one that’s only a 7-minute drive away, not 40. He’s happy there. The place doesn’t have an enormous outdoor play area or a garden like his former school, but it makes up for that with a terrific staff, a great program, and some really wonderful families. I’m grateful we were able to find a spot there.

It’s been about 9 or 10 months since Everest switched facilities — long enough that the current place isn’t his new school anymore, it’s just school. He’s bigger now and more developed. He’s learned so much. His vocabulary is expansive, and he can enunciate far more clearly.

Recently, I gave Everest pretzel sticks as a snack.

“Mommy, look!” he said. Again, he had the two sticks positioned like a cross.

Not again, I thought.

“It’s an X,” he said. “Like my friend at my old school. Xavier.”

That’s when the reality of what I’d done hit me with a gut punch. I pulled my child from his school for saying the name of his friend. X-avier.

Not our savior.

*Name has been changed to protect the real a-hole toddler

Lil’ Starman

January 16, 2018

These days my 3-year-old son, Everest, is totally into letters, words, and writing. But yesterday he took this to a whole new level, and I’ve never been so proud.

E: Mommy, what is this letter?

ME: That’s a “D.” Like dog or dinosaur –

E: And David Bowie.

via GIPHY

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