Today we went to Easter service at Our Savior’s Community Church that we’d scoped out a few days ago. We got there at 9:30 for their 10:00 service which turned out to be a good time. Everyone was friendly and the church was beautiful. Unlike other churches, to which we’re accustom, this one didn’t have a bulletin so we could follow the service. Instead, it was all on screens on which were projected lyrics to the songs and scripture verses read by Pastor Rob. It was OK working without a bulletin, but bulletins hare meaningful to me because I’m the one who prints them for our home church, Bethany Lutheran in Warren, Or.

After the service we returned to the condo where Diane whipped up a terrific Easter dinner of ham, tiny peas, and tiny klondike gold potatoes. It was a pretty awesome meal.

Instead of taking a nap after eating, we jumped in the car and drove all over the area, even to the east side of I-10 just to see what was over there. Turns out there are just more towns with Palm(s) in the name and lots more houses. Choices are: Palm Springs, Thousand Palms, Palm Desert, Desert Palms, to name a few. Actually, that’s all the towns I can find with that common word in the name. Still, for a newcomer to the area I can see why the city names could cause confusion. We’ve discovered, in our short visit here, that Ramon Ave is a link that always leads us back to Palm Springs Tennis Club Resort. At least it’s been working so far.

An interesting thing about Palm Springs is that no where in the city is there a parking meter. Parking is free everywhere, including the parking garage located on the main thoroughfare. Also, as our Jennifer pointed out, the streets are amazingly clean. It’s almost like people care enough to NOT litter. Maybe keeping it clean is a tradeoff for all that free parking. That, or people are just proud of their surroundings.

Solar panels are everywhere here which makes perfect sense since the sun shines most of the time. By everywhere, I mean lots and lots of houses have their roofs covered with them. What surprised us was the prevalence of wind power options. We drove through an entire forest of the wind turbines when we arrived last Tuesday, but today we got up close to them so I took a photo. This field is located near the I-10 corridor …

We have these in Oregon, too, but not in such mind-boggling numbers, so close together. Ours are typically scattered loosely across the tops of hills which is nothing like the above photo. If you can enlarge the photo, you’ll see that the turbines seem to taper off into infinity toward the far away hills. If I had to guess how many wind mills are out there, I’d have to say a couple of million. Easily. But, I’d be wrong. Data from 2013 states there were 2700 of them at that time. Another undated report states there are 4000 of them. Now, who knows?

While looking for that information, I was surprised to learn that the Wind Turbine farm in Palm Springs is the oldest facility of this nature in the US. Who knew?