Ruth and I made our first trip to the Coachella Valley several years ago. The valley is about forty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide. It contains the resort cities of Palm Springs and Palm Desert, as well as Rancho Mirage, Indio, La Quinta, Indian Wells and Cathedral City. We booked a timeshare in Indio because we didn’t know any better. It was the worst of many that we have booked. We planned the visit so that Elizabeth who was living in San Diego, and Mike in Marina Del Rey, could come over for a few days. They came and we started to explore and learn about the valley through that first visit.
Since that trip we’ve traveled to this area several times. We’ve booked timeshares in Palm Springs and Cathedral City, rented houses for a week at a time in Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage and spent three winters in a condo in Cathedral City. All of our kids and grandkids have come for visits, my brother-in law and sister-in-law, Dan and Kathy, and our friends Jim and Diane have joined us too.
We made our most recent trip on Friday. We’re staying in another timeshare and plan to spend some quality time with Mike and his wife, Kate. They like to visit the Palm Springs area. (Whenever we come to the area, no matter where we stay, we tell everyone that we are going to Palm Springs because the name is easily recognized.) This is one of those, “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here.” places. It gets too hot in the summer.
We flew from Orlando to Palm Springs through Houston. We had just enough time on the ground to go from one airplane to another and on the way I saw a large bronze statue of President George H. Bush. I didn’t physically stop, but for a split second I thought of him. Before I went to bed I learned of his passing. I’m sure that thousands of people experienced the same thing.
There is a lot to do in the valley. I golf once or twice each time we come. We explore the area and have done many things that we wouldn’t do in Michigan or Florida. We’ve gone to the Palm Springs International Film Festival, several PGA golf tournaments, explored the agricultural community, observed international equestrian competitions, and hiked in Joshua Tree National Park on a number of occasions. We’ve also made the four hour drive to Vegas several times.
We are only going to be here for a long weekend so our go to list is short. We have two must see restaurants on our list. Nothing fancy. We drove to “Elmer’s” as soon as we landed so that Ruth could have their famous German pancake. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or eaten anywhere. I’m very sure that she would make the flight just for the pancake. She’ll have another one or two before we leave. We also need to go to Sherman’s Deli. We love everything about the place, especially the corned beef sandwich and the coconut cream pie.
Desert nights are very special. It’s very dark because no high rise signage is allowed and all of the street lights point down. Night driving takes some adjustment.
Ruth would like to go to The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens festival of lights. We’ve been to the park before and enjoyed our time there. The first time we went, I heard a sound that I had never heard before, and hope to never hear again. The zoo has a resident jaguar. The jaguar had a hairball the day we visited. You could hear his attempts to dislodge the hairball throughout our entire day. Each attempt had me looking over my shoulder for his charge.
I’ll let you know how the light festival goes and provide an update on the hairball dilemma another time.