Palm Springs

Monday October 1 2018

Today was a driving around and getting the lay of the land day. There are about 6 to 8 towns that run together and collectively make up the greater Palm Springs area. 

Coachella Valley

It’s an interesting place; there are large tracks of semi arid desert mingled in with the commercial or residential sections. Residential areas seem to be divided between manufactured home communities and high end golf course enclaves.

All new communities are walled and gated.

 All of the high end golf course communities are walled and gated. The walled communities are immaculately landscaped with lush tropical trees, shrubbery and green grass. 

Typical manufactured home in greater Palm Springs

In stark contrast, the manufactured home communities have crushed stone yards with bare concrete driveways. Landscaping is native plants that don’t need a lot of water. Every so often we’d see a homeowner who had a small patch of grass but we never saw a complete yard in grass.

Downtown Palm Springs

The downtown business district is busy; the only empty businesses we saw were ones being demo’ed to make way for redevelopment. One project is a live/work town center that is renewing an entire city block. BTW, this whole valley is low rise, I don’t think we saw a building over 3-4 stories. Downtown Palm Springs is decidedly 50’ish, lots of Art Deco architecture, many cocktail lounges. It’s easy to imagine the movie icons of that era hanging out in these places.

Would we want to revisit the Coachella valley, No. Would we recommend it to y’all, not unless you can afford to play on the golf courses.