What an amazing, unique place - Palm Desert - makes you wonder who thought it would be a good idea to build a town here. Like Phoenix, it is situated in the middle of the US southwest desert – in a bowl – surrounded by hills on three sides. Dry as dust, lots of dust, yet, the air is clean, dry, and has 350 days of sunshine. Palm Springs became a place to get away from the dirt and smog of LA for those who could afford it – the stars of Hollywood in the 1930s. They came and then northerners happened by and decided this was a nice place to spend winter and the place grew and grew until it covered most of the Coachella Valley. It became a golfers’ mecca, with more golf courses per square kilometer than anywhere else. It spread out. Resorts sprang up to cater to all the snowbirds and so, us, being snowbirds, we came too.
From the LA airport, it’s about a two-hour drive to Palm Springs/Palm Desert, over a certain rise in the land you’ll know you’re getting close as the bulk of San Jacinto Mountain rears up on your right. The highest peak around the Coachella Valley, there is an ‘aerial tramway’ to take you up to the top, at 8,516 feet—enjoy two restaurants, observation decks, natural history museum, two documentary theaters, gift shop and over 50 miles of hiking trails, a full forest of Ponderosa Pines, unique because, as you walk, you become aware of a caramel-vanilla odor in the air. You trace it to the trees and stick your nose into the bark and inhale the most amazing aroma – cookies baking. Make sure to be well dressed though, ‘cause it could be 30˚C down below, but it will be 15-20˚C up here.
But, I digress, you enter the Morongo Valley, a natural funnel for the wind from the sea, before you turn south into Coachella, and the first set of wind turbines appear, and then more and more, hundreds, spinning away, generating electricity… unfortunately, a lot of the turbines were stopped, while others were spinning – broken?
The next thing to strike you is the rise in temperatures as one enters the bowl of the valley, easily rises by 10-15˚C, and then what strikes the senses are the colors: beiges, browns, ochres, dusty greys… the buildings are all oranges and yellows, with copious amounts of greens – palms, cacti, desert willows, almost all transplanted from elsewhere, save for when you get closer, in the south to the (stinky) Salton Sea where its influence is felt in stands of sagebrush, palms, hardy tress, and plenty of date palm and palm oil tree plantations. Then there are the blues, small lakes, fountains, water features. However as unusual a destination as this is – an artificial oasis in the desert - it does present a harmonious whole to the senses. The air is dry and clean, the colors vibrant, the mountains on all sides, memorable.
Downtown Palm Springs on a warm November evening and the place is jumping. Scary, these days of COVID, several blocks of the main drag filled wall-to-wall with restaurants and shops, hi-end, lo-end, people milling around, queues to get into some places, local bars and restaurants are filled to the brim. The center of the strip is for the tourists, the ends have the bars for the locals. Did I say, filled with people?? The best day to visit is Thursdays, when the drag is closed to traffic and the Palm Springs Village Fest fills the streets with vendors, food trucks, sidewalk performers, musicians, a farmers’ market and brick-a-brack, some unique, most not, and all, expensive. Open between 7-10 PM.
The Valley is a golfer’s paradise but it is not cheap so be prepared, but if you want to play a good golf course at reasonable rates, head off to the Yucca Valley and Hawk’s Landing Golf Course, and by the way you will be on course to the Joshua Tree National Park, but that’s for another day. Bring a sweater. Yucca Valley is about a fifty-minute drive northeast from Palm Desert, glory in the amazing twisty road up into the valley. The start at Palm Desert is at 375 ft altitude, then comes the Morongo Valley at 2350 ft, then Yucca Valley at 3100 ft, and the next day (if you choose) Joshua Tree Park at 3900 ft.
The south west of the United States has lots of amazing parks: the Grand Canyon (of course), Zion, Arches , Monument Valley, astounding Bryce Canyon… Joshua Tree is another unique park. The tree itself is like a great big overgrown cactus (although it is a yucca) and the valley has millions of them on top of this flat high plain surrounded on all sides by broken rounded heaps of boulders, some small, some as high as hills.
Unlike the Rockies or the lower Appalachians, these mountain chains close to the Pacific have been broken by a multitude of earthquakes over the eons (San Andreas fault) so they look like a Giant had scooped together giant-sized boulders into heaps as tall as hills. Hiking in this dry cool valley is for the experienced only, though close to the main, and only, road through the park are campsites – book early.
Talking about hikes, there are several in the Coachella Valley, from the ones on top of Mt. San Jacinto, to short steep ones right off the west end of Fred Waring Drive in Palm Desert, but two of the best are the hike into Indian Canyon and the one into Tahquitz Canyon from Palm Springs
Indian Canyon, has a number of small springs, some no more than seepages, that flow out of the San Jacinto range. It is part of an Indian reservation, and there is an entrance fee, and then you can take off and hike up the tree line along the small stream/trail for a considerable distance, as long as your endurance and the water you brought, takes you. – bring lots of water. The day we were there it was 31˚C. Enchanting.
By contrast, in Tahquitz Canyon, you have a goal – the waterfall at the end of the canyon. This is a true canyon, as you walk further and further into the canyon along a rough trail (big steps up, big steps down), the high walls of the canyon, all broken boulders, close in until you reach the small waterfall with a pool at its foot, and a stream that meanders away the way you came. You know you’re getting close when the vegetation turns green.
If you have the time, take a couple of days just to lie by the pool where you are staying, cultivate a tan (not too much), breathe in the dry, pollution-free desert air, marvel at this Oasis in the desert surrounded by hills. But the next day, go and visit The Living Desert.
A combination of arboretum/zoo/gardens, the Living Desert features animals from the dry savannahs of Africa, the high plains of North America…with a few inmates from Australia thrown in. Seventy exhibits in all, with solid breeding programs in place, you’ll see all the big cats, varieties of antelope, six types of foxes, rhinos, camels, birds, including ostriches
…feed a giraffe, take pictures – great “for kids of all ages”, and, no, they did not have a Roadrunner, but I did get a picture of one on a golf course.
And…the Living Desert has one more unique attraction for fans of model trains, the Living Desert Bighorn Railroad, a g-scale layout on ¾ of an acre!!!, outdoors…3100ft of track on 18 distinct interconnecting lines, all backed by towns, hills, tunnels, mini trees, people… it has to be seen to be believed.
An interesting visit is to Cabot’s Pueblo Museum in Desert Hot Springs, one of the many little towns in this fairly small valley. It’s an utterly quaint, quixotic ramshackle building in the Pueblo style, and has 35 rooms, 150 windows!, 65 doors!!, and 30 different roof levels!!! It has a system of shafts in the walls to keep the place cool in the summer. The eccentric who built it was Cabot Yerxa in 1913. He named it the Eagle’s Nest (just slightly presumptuous). With only a pick and a shovel he dug two wells on opposite sides on the hill his new house was on. Unbeknown to him, he had built his house on top of the Mission Creek Fault, part of the San Andreas fault. One of the wells produced hot water (110˚F), and on the other side, cool water. Most of the house was built from adobe with scavenged wood and scrap metal from the area. The site well worth visiting, if only to see this curiosity.
Just ten Kms from Yucca Valley town to the north, climbing up yet another defile by car you come to Pioneertown - a replica of what one might see in a Western, but with a cute whimsical twist. All the buildings, regardless of what they are called – Hotel…Likker Barn…Saddlery,..Trading Post…Hay Feed, are all selling ‘stuff’, bar one: a nice honest-to-goodness saloon called Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace where the steaks and burgers are BBQed on a wood fire outside and the ambience is great. Always packed with tourists.
An honorary mention must go to the College of the Desert Farmers’ Market plus Street & Art Fair with dozens of exhibitors of local produce, food, handicrafts, etc, at unfair prices, but, hey, you can’t get better BBQ Pork Ribs than right there for lunch. Every Saturday and Sunday from 8AM to 2PM.
We met Canadian snowbirds from BC and Alberta down for the winter…and it was clear why. Worth a long stay.
PS: Some more Pics:
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