The Coachella Valley -- home of such towns as Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirage -- is indeed a desert, shielded from moisture-laden air out of the Pacific Ocean by mountains ranging over 10,000 feet in altitude.
If it gets too hot in the desert, you can ride The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway up to the Mt. San Jacinto State Park and Wilderness where the weather's a bit different. Here's Frank somewhere about the 9000 ft level.
Frank belongs to the Volunteer Patrol, a group that assists the Rangers by providing information to hikers, processing permits, checking campsites, maintaining trails, and keeping a lookout for problems in the Wilderness areas. Those problems can include the need to search for lost people, rescue those who get into trouble, render First Aid, and carry-out injured hikers, since the Wilderness is not always a forgiving place. Frank has belonged to the Patrol since 1991. He put in enough time to be "Patroller of the Year" in 1993,-4, and -5, but he's slowed down a bit since then. Mojave thinks "slow" a good thing -- and he prefers to burrow into the sand to cool off.