Karin Bartsch's Journals

On our way west we observed fields and fields of green, different vegetable fields and more and more Date Palms. Pleasing the eye were also plantages of wine, olives, oranges, mandarines....Water canals for irrigation of all this California farming. This all would be not that impressive and rich would it not be for Mexican workers, who come with buses everyday to maintain and harvest the fields. What would Arizona and California do without them??  On our way we had the Salton Sea on our right side, quite a site to see also.... I tasted the drinking water out of the faucet right away after our arrival here, because I was reading that Desert Hot Springs has the best drinking water. It is true!! We do not have to buy drinking water as long as we are here.....

Coachella Valley is a large valley landform in Southern California. The valley extends for approximately 45 miles (72 km) in Riverside County southeast from the San Bernardino Mountains to the saltwater Salton Sea, the largest lake in California. It is approximately 15 miles (24 km) wide along most of its length, bounded on the west by the San Jacinto Mountains and the Santa Rosa Mountains and on the north and east by the Little San Bernardino Mountains. The San Andreas Fault crosses the valley from the Chocolate Mountains in the southeast corner and along the centerline of the Little San Bernardinos. The fault is easily visible along its northern length as a strip of greenery against an otherwise bare mountain.  Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs are twin cities, only some miles apart from each other and divided by Interstate-10, Desert Hot Springs north of the Highway and Palm Springs south of it.

The surrounding mountains peak at around 11,000 feet or 3,400 meters.