This nice couple was on holiday from England and wanted to see Joshua Tree National Park so they booked our Joshua Tree Adventure Tour. It was a beautiful day and they had the good fortune to see lots of wildlife including hawks, black-tailed jackrabbits, quail, horned lizards, white-tailed antelope squirrels, coyotes, and more!

The videos and photos below are from yesterday's San Andreas Fault Tour. This was a family get-together from San Francisco. They were a lot of fun and our guides enjoyed showing them all the highlights of the tour including the extensive agriculture that grows right alongside the San Andreas Fault. The guides also had a few tricks up their sleeves which kept the group thoroughly entertained.

Cactus Bees are solitary, ground-nesting bees that specialize on the flowers of various kinds of cacti. The photos below show a Cactus Bee buried deep inside a Calico Cactus flower. There are some 23 species of Cactus Bees in the U.S. Southwest, and they serve as major pollinators of these plants. They alight first on the flared, over-size, green stigma that is borne above the stamens - thus depositing some grains of pollen from the last visited flower. Finally they push down through the forest of stamens to get at the nectar deep inside. Their hairy bodies gather more pollen and their long tongues lap the nectar. Both are carted back to their nests in the ground which they build and provision solitarily, i.e. they do not live in hives. The photos below are from a recent Desert Sampler Tour.

Our three guests below are standing in front of a very extraordinary tree. The single needle (leaf) is unique among pines of the world. Singleleaf pinyon needles are long-lived (5-12 years). Their longevity is considered an extreme expression of "evergreenness," giving the tree the ability to conserve nutrients to take advantage of short favorable conditions within a generally unfavorable period. Singleleaf pinyon is long-lived. Large trees can monopolize site resources over a life span of 350 years or more. Dominant pinyons are often 400 years old and have been known to reach 800 to 1000 years! The photo below is from a recent Joshua Tree Adventure Tour! 

Birds are just one feature of the fascinating and unusual Secrets of the Salton Sea Tour! You'll also visit giant mud pots and erupting mud volcanoes. Obsidian Butte and Salvation Mountain are two more highlights of the Salton Sea Tour. And did you know that the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California? Find out how it was created on this one-of-a-kind excursion.

On our Desert to Stars Tour, you will come face to face with some of the largest antennas in the world! You will learn all about them and how they monitor so many objects orbiting our planet. It is one of the most fascinating tours we offer. It includes lunch at a ghost town before touring the 53 square mile NASA facility.

It's fascinating to see the wind techs strapped in their harnesses to the wind turbines 300 feet in the air. It's a dangerous job but an important job. They keep the wind turbines operating because a broken wind turbine means the wind farmer is losing a lot of money. Besides learning all about wind turbines and wind energy, our guests usually get to see many interesting sights in and around the wind farms. The photos below are from a recent Palm Springs Windmill Tour.

The Mecca Aster is a rare wildflower and is endemic to the area we visit on our San Andreas Fault Tour. It blooms from January until June. The photo below was taken on a recent tour.

Elite Land Tours features over 30 tours in the Palm Springs area. This gives our visitors plenty of choices when it comes to sightseeing, thrill seeking, and adventure. Our Joshua Tree Adventure Tour and our San Andreas Fault Tour called "It's Our Fault" are two of our most popular tours. Other popular tours include the Palm Springs City Tour and the Palm Springs Windmill Tour. If those don't strike your fancy, be sure to check out our website as there are many excursions to choose from and there's something for everyone!

The Phainopepla is a striking bird, 16–20 cm long with a noticeable crest and a long tail; it is slender, and has an upright posture when it perches. Its bill is short and slender. The male is glossy black, and has a white wing patch that is visible when it flies; the female is plain gray and has a lighter gray wing patch. Both sexes have red eyes, but these are more noticeable in the female than the male. They are the most common bird in our desert and they come here this time of year to feed on the desert mistletoe berries. Phainopepla have a specialized mechanism in their gizzard that shucks berry skins off the fruit and packs the skins separately from the rest of the fruit into the intestines for more efficient digestion. So far this is the only known bird able to do this. The photo below was from a recent Joshua Tree Adventure Tour.