WildLights: Living Desert's Glowful Celebration

It's the 25th year for the shimmery Palm Desert experience.

HAPPY 25TH, WILDLIGHTS: The desert has a reputation, one that is quite correct, for being a vast place that can be quite dark in parts. Drive deep enough into the Mojave, or the Sonoran Desert, or the gorgeous and dramatic arid landscape of your choice, late at night and you will eventually find that your sole sources of illumination are the stars and a few moonbeams, if the moon is doing its whole super-extra-full thing. Call it a transformative experience, call it a little magical even, communing with the desert by night. But sometimes, if you're in just the right spot, and it is the right time of year, over a million wee sources of light will lend loveliness and enchantment to a cacti-laden, critter-cool area. That right spot, right time is happening at The Living Desert, the animal park that focuses on beasties found in and around desert regions. The Palm Desert destination will sometimes hold evening events, but no after-sundown soiree sparkles quite as much as...

WILDLIGHTS: It's the yearly holiday extravaganza at The Living Desert, and it will once again twinkle over several select nights beginning on Friday, Nov. 24 (the final evening for 2017 is Christmas Eve). The million-plus lights wending through the path-lined park are mighty marvelous, but so are the keeper chats, the decorated G-scale model trains, and "... a herd of life-size, luminescent animal lanterns including giraffe and cheetahs..." giving more glow to the scene. Food and drink? Buy them there. Adding some splendor to a desert trip between Thanksgiving and Christmas? That can be done at The Living Desert's WildLights. The desert only lit by the moon and stars is beautiful, but when a little slice of it is festooned with lanterns and bulbs for a few weeks, that, too, can summon a sigh or three.

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