California - February 2017 - Day 3

February 10, 2017 (Friday)

Panning for GOLD!

After checking out we headed to the Eagle & High Point Gold Mine in Julian for some history of the gold rush. The tour was $10/adult and $5/child. The tour lasted about an hour and a half. It was a neat tour – we got to pan for gold and walk around in the mine. The mine was 11 floors, the tour took you on two of them. The place was a little tough to get to, the GPS was trying to take us away that would not go through and then once we did get on track the road was really rough (but not long).  Tourism is the largest industry in Julian. The town is well known for its apple pies, the climate in the area is ideal for apple growing. The entire township is designated as a historical district.

Eagle Mine 1870

San Jacinto Mountains

We continued driving through the mountains on our way to Palm Springs.  There were some nice viewpoints that we stopped at along the way. We also stopped at the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center, where we hiked the Randall Henderson Trail. There were three different trail loops, we hiked to the second loop. Unfortunately we did not spot any bighorn sheep.

The previous day we booked a trip up the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.  There were two options for the tramway – with or without a meal. We decided to eat at the top since it was only $10 more ($25.95/adult without the meal or $36/adult with the meal). The Tram starts in the Chino Canyon (elev. 2643 feet) and takes to up to Mountain Station (elev. 8516 feet). It is a 2.5 mile ascend that takes about 10 minutes! The Tramway features the world’s largest rotation tramcar. Up to 80 guests can ride the tramcar and the tramcar rotates two full rotations on the ride. I should warn you that there is a $5 parking fee that we did not know about prior to arriving. The food at the restaurant was well worth the $10 – you get a salad, roll, veggie, potato and main meat (or vegetable lasagna).

Mountain Station

Once we made it to the top we headed outdoors right away since it was late afternoon.  There was about 3 feet of snow at the top of the mountain! It was about 45 degrees during our visit and the snow was a bit slushy. Heading back inside we watched the videos about the park and how the tramway was constructed.  By the time we headed back down the mountain it was dark out. The view out of the tram was pretty with all the city lights shining (sorry no photo – the rotating tramcar did not provide good photo options).