Images of Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument – Southern California, taken in May 2019.

Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument protects two distinctly different mountain ranges; the Santa Rosa Mountain Range in the south which is primarily made up of rugged and boulder covered desert mountains and the towering San Jacinto Mountain Range to the north that includes the 10,834 foot snow covered San Jacinto Peak.

Administered jointly by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service (USFS), Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument is a well-developed park with several visitor centers and the beautiful Palms to Pines Scenic Byway (CA 74) which connects the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs and Indio) to the east with the higher elevations to the west.

I drove the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway on what was a clear but extremely windy day in the Coachella Valley, 35 mph winds with gusts up to 45 mph (they don’t have a few hundred electric turbines throughout the valley just for fun), and was delighted to find peace and calm up in the mountains. Winding through the hot and rocky Santa Rosa Mountains, the byway comes out on the west side of the range and then turns north along the San Jacinto range where the temperatures dipped into the low 50’s. It’s a beautiful ride along the entire byway and incredible considering the radical change in scenery and climate.