Patrick Dougherty's Secret Nests

It is a bit discombobulating returning to San Francisco after three weeks in Southern California.



The weather looks especially gray after blue desert skies, and the street people sleeping in Civic Center Plaza on a foggy afternoon just adds to the gloominess.



The only detail that seemed a happy change was the full blooming of the sycamore trees around Patrick Dougherty's "Upper Crust" sculptures.



Under the trees, it feels like there are secret nests...



...woven magically into a forest.



Though Donald Kinney of the great photoblog "A Photo A Day" doesn't much care for them, I think the sculptures have finally come completely into their own.

Heat

The temperature in Palm Springs has been edging up each day this week closer to 120 degrees.



On Monday evening, a transformer exploded because of the heat, knocking out power to the neighborhood for an hour before Southern California Edison workers managed to fix it.



By Thursday, humidity was added to the mix.



When "The Desert Sun" newspaper announced that the weekend was slated to be even warmer, we decided to retreat to San Francisco.

Down in the Valley

Not wanting to brave the terrors again of Highway 243 back to Palm Springs, we continued south from Idyllwild to Highway 74...



...where the road crosses a long, beautiful valley at about 4,000 feet...



...passing what looked to be affluent horse ranches.



The alpine valleys gave way to desert mountains...



...and rock hills...



...where bighorn sheep were supposedly roaming.



As we neared the Coachella Valley, the land became increasingly forbidding and desolate...



...until we started seeing bits of country club golf courses peeking out from the backs of canyons.



The highway dipped down into Palm Desert, passing by the grotesquely wealthy Bighorn country club estates...



...and the temperatures, which had been in the 80's in the mountains, jumped to 117 degrees.



We were down in the valley again.

Idyllwild

The mountain resort town of Idyllwild has a population of about 3,500...



...and seemingly more hippie style gift shops per capita than anywhere in the world...



...including the Artspresso Fine Art Gallery and Divine Scents Candle Gallery.



According to a Wikipedia article, after the invention of the automobile, "the town presented itself as an alpine village, and hotels and businesses had German or German-sounding names, but this practice ended during World War II."



The article continues: "In the late 1960s and 1970s, there was an influx of hippies in Idyllwild, which changed the nature of the town and alarmed many longtime residents."



There is an arts academy nearby for teenagers, which Jolene from "Saturday Matinee" attended, and downtown hosts "The Rustic Theatre" which is a combination hot dog stand, video rental store, movie theatre, and performing arts center in a tiny little building.



This is no small town backwater, though. They were even offering a special midnight showing of the latest "Harry Potter" movie on the day it was opening nationally.



There is also a local newspaper called "The Town Crier" (click here for an online version) that is a model for local news.