Palm Springs is a nice place to spend a few days; and if you are there on a weekend, you can find some great buys at the College of the Desert Campus Street Fair. The Street Fair is operated by the Alumni Association and their advertising brochure indicates that they have raised over $9.3 million that has been used for grants and scholarships for the College.
When Palm Springs was incorporated in 1938, the street markers were constructed using native stone from the area. Over the years, all of the original street markers were removed, except the one at Palm Canyon (Main Street) and Chino Drive.
Since so many movie stars have homes in Palm Springs, the City decided to start its own walk of fame similar to the one in Hollywood.
Although our grandchildren were not with us, I'm sure that their favorite Palm Springs shop would be the Elena Bulatova Fine Art Gallery that specializes in a different type of art.
Several companies offer tours of the City that go by many of the movie stars' homes, including the house that Elvis was going to be married in; but the wedding was moved to Las Vegas when the property was overrun by tourist and press photographers.
The Palm Springs Air Museum is one of those places that you can easily spend a full day looking at aircraft, watching movies, and visiting with the staff.
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| F-16N Falcon |
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| A-6 Intruder |
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| A-4J Skyhawk |
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| P-47D Thunderbolt |
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| B-17G Flying Fortress |
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| British Spitfire |
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| P-51D Mustang |
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| B-25J Mitchell |
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| F-86 Sabre Jet |
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| AH-1 Huey Cobra |
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| Bob Hope Stage |
The tram starts in the Sonoran Life Zone and then passes through four additional live zones, with the top visitor center located in the Artic/Alpine Life Zone. The top of the tram is located within the Mt. San Jacinto State Park, which contains 50 fifty miles of hiking tails, primitive campgrounds, a ranger station, and an adventure center for winter activities. The visitor center contains two restaurants, a cocktail lounge, viewing areas, natural history museum movie theaters and gift shops. We planned our trip up the mountain so that we could eat dinner in the restaurant and watch the sun set over Palm Springs.
From the visitors center, the wind energy windmill towers look like small crosses lined up on the valley floor.
Just up the road in Desert Hot Springs is the famous Cabot's Pueblo Museum that was built by Cabot Yerxa. Cabot was known as idealist, a humanitarian, and a lover of the desert.
When Cabot started building his dream home, he needed water, so he decided to dig a well with a pick and shovel. What he discovered was the now famous Desert Hot Springs. On his second try he did discover a pure cold water aquifer, so he plumbed his house with both hot and cold water.
By the time Cabot passed away in 1965 he had built a 35-room, 5,000 square foot pueblo entirely from scrap and re-purposed materials. People now say that he was ahead of his time because he lived by the three R's - reuse, reduce, and recycle.
Cabot encouraged artist to come and stay at his home and he built two apartments for the artist to live in while they were visiting. After his death, the new owner continued to invite artist to the property and in 1978 Peter Toth carved 43-foot tall "Waokiye" from a fallen sequoia tree. (A brochure at the site states that in the Sioux language, Waokiye is said to mean "traditional helper.")
Every time I travel to Palm Springs, Kolohe makes me promise that I will go up the mountain to Idyllwild and collect large pine cones for her class. Since we were going right past the entrance to the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, we decided to stop at the visitor center.
The visitor center has a nice movie and several displays and surrounding the visitor center are various hiking trails that are popular with day trippers. It was worth a stop.
When I saw a sign advertising "The Freshest Ice Cream in the World," I had to check out the new "Creamistry" chain. It's expensive, but everyone needs to try it once.
You start by telling the clerk what ingredients you want in your ice cream, then after mixing everything together the operator injects liquid nitrogen into the mixture and presto -- solid ice cream!
Located throughout the Palm Springs Valley are numerous wind energy towers of all types and designs. They offer tours of the wind farms; but unfortunately, we did not have the time to take a tour, so I will put that on my bucket list for our next visit.
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