Palm Desert - Living Zoo and Gardens

Saturday, November 16, 2019
Palm Desert, California, United States
On my first full day in Palm Desert I wasn’t able to check into my timeshare until 4:00 in the afternoon. I decided to go to what is described several places online as one of the leading attractions in the Palm Springs area – The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens.  I should mention that I was immediately impressed with Palm Desert from the moment I first gazed down upon it from high in the Santa Rosa mountains on my descent into town. Located in what is some of the most barren desert in North America, most of the Coachella Valley is an oasis of palm trees, lush vegetation, and emerald green golf courses. This is one of those places much of California’s limited water supply evaporates. As elsewhere in California the hillside neighborhoods appear especially lush and affluent, but many of the towns on the valley floor like Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, Bermuda Dunes, and La Quinta as well as Palm Desert are rich, lush green places, quite a contrast to drier Lake Havasu City where I was a few days earlier.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect of Living Desert or if at $25 for admission I’d find it worthwhile. It is described in some places as one of the top ten zoos in the U.S., but I hadn’t heard about before starting to plan this trip. I ended up being extremely impressed.  Located in Palm Desert at the edge of town where the lush manicured vegetation hits the rocky brown desert hills, the place sprawls over a huge area.  The zoo and gardens are essentially divided into two halves – North America and Africa – although a third Australian section is in the works. True to the institution’s name, the animals and plants displayed are all desert dwellers on the two continents and the variety is impressive.
Possibly even more than the animals, I was impressed with the variety of the gardens.  If you travel through the Desert Southwest or other deserts around the world, you see that the flora varies significantly.  At Living Desert they’ve recreated the plant life of all the deserts in North America from Great Basin to Chihuahuan to Baja Vizcaino.  Same is true in the African section.  Living Desert turned out to fill up most of my day….and then I was able to check in at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Villages.
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