Sunday morning seems to be turning into our preferred hiking day here in Palm Springs. Once again, we left the Sands shortly after 9am heading for a short drive to the Araby Trail that winds right up past and high above the landmark Bob Hope home and property. We heard the property was for sale so Paulette and I thought we’d better check it out again. We made this hike last year as well.
I took a panorama shot with my new G15 from above Bob Hope’s 
In the photo above the huge circular cement structure is a water reservoir and right behind it is a smaller one right on the Hope property. I understand Hope built his own reservoir and the bigger one is now for other homes on the mountainside.
A little higher up gave us a good view of the back of the house
The Bob Hope home is 17,531 sq. ft., has 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and it’s rumoured that the pool is shaped like Bob Hope’s profile. Maybe it has a slide like Bob Hope’s nose? Anyway, its for sale and if you happen to feel like parting with $68 million you could have it all including the best view of the entire Coachella Valley in Palm Springs. Too bad, Paulette’s still without her Visa Card!
This home, with the pool, also has its own private putting green
The Hope Estate isn’t the only blockbuster home on this private road up the mountain. How about the one pictured above? If you enlarge it you’ll see the owner practicing his putting on his own golf green. The home has the almost mandatory swimming pool and a perfect view of the long runways of the Palm Springs International Airport. What a spectacular view he has from right below the Hope’s.
It was a very long hike up from the desert floor
The Araby Trail is a mixture of sand and gravel and thankfully has plenty of switchbacks. It also has some killer grades that both of us struggled on. We brought lots of water with us so we made sure to take a few breaks on the way up to rest and give Molly and Rylie a drink too. After that nice bath and grooming the other day the muttzo’s are pretty dusty and dirty again.
Just to prove I made it
Even though it was early when we started our hike it was hot. In the photo above you can even make out traces of sweat on my t-shirt!! We made it to the top plateau of the trail and from there it went on along the top of the ridge for what seemed like miles and miles. We’d been on the mountain for almost 2 hours, it was getting much hotter by then so we figured we’d better head back down.
This is a high up the mountain side we got before the heat got us
By the time we got back to the Sands just past noon, we were pretty much beat for the day. We spent the afternoon lying around out back and going for a swim up at the pool. It was just another beautiful, hot afternoon.
Stopping for a water break
On another topic altogether, yesterday I discovered a solution to a problem many folks, including Paulette just recently, were having when the Blogger Spam Filter seemed to stop working allowing all kinds of anonymous spam messages to appear on blogs. This fix really negates the necessity to disable anonymous messages due to spam. I’ll write about this procedure in tomorrow’s post.
Have a great Presidential Inauguration Day, and thanks again for visiting!
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