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![Lost Horse Valley, part of Joshua Tree National Park](https://cdn.minnesotamonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2023/08/Lost-Horse-Valley-National-Park-ServiceBrad-Sutton-scaled-e1691596230674.jpg)
Nationwide Park Service/Brad Sutton
For Golden Age celebrities, it was a hideaway from Hollywood, a beachless secret of California, cupped by mountains on one aspect and beset by the hallucinations of Joshua Tree Nationwide Park on the opposite.
Palm Springs continues to be that poolside desert city. However now it’s additionally a snowbird capital, an LGBTQ+ stomping floor, and SoCal’s low-slung, low(ish)-profile sizzling spot.
For vacationers, winter makes a fantastic drop-in season, between December and April. The vibe is laid-back, nearly granola. Dusk chills streets hugged by bougainvillea. Polynesian-inspired masks peep over sunset-colored cocktails within the city’s trademark cave-dark tiki bars. Within the foothills, an aerial tramway floats up craggy slopes, deposits vacationers, then hauls them singing and swaying again right down to this twinkling 45,000-person outpost two hours east of Los Angeles. It’s an excuse to chill out at a resort, to brush up towards an existential imposition of pure magnificence, and to bounce from mod-art museum to kitsch purveyor.
After all, it’s additionally excellent for West Coast wellness gurus—who do their greatest to spite the dry air. As of late final 12 months, a brand new draw is the Sensei Porcupine Creek retreat. Surrounded by date timber, the 230-acre personal property has change into an upper-crust escape that includes yoga, spa providers, tennis, and golf.
![Keys Ranch, part of Joshua Tree National Park](https://cdn.minnesotamonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2023/08/Keys-Ranch-National-Park-ServiceKurt-Moses-scaled-e1691596353875.jpg)
Nationwide Parks Service/Kurt Moses
Not all are in it for the pampering. Rugged explorers can’t overlook the yucca-spotted Joshua Tree National Park, which extends 800,000 acres about an hour’s drive east of the town and accommodates two deserts—the Mojave and the Colorado—to attract hikers, climbers, boulderers, and in a single day campers. (Car excursions escort the much less outdoorsy.)
For more-contained wilds, the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens options North American, African, and Australian animals, not far exterior Palm Springs. An nearly 2-mile looped climbing path climbs as much as the Tahquitz Canyon Waterfall, a part of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indian Reservation. And the Moorten Botanical Garden bristles with cacti, plus hundreds of different hardy desert plant varieties.
![Bootlegger Tiki in Palm Springs](https://cdn.minnesotamonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2023/08/317813449_1205159927023700_296483408434552748_n-1.jpg)
Courtesy of Bootlegger Tiki
A lot smoother are the cocktails downtown. The bar hoppers of Palm Canyon Drive—the town’s fundamental strip, studded with galleries and midcentury-mod furnishings shops—ought to preserve the area’s tiki historical past in thoughts. These Hawaii-tinted watering holes historically sling rum cocktails (speared fruit, teeny umbrellas). Traditionally talking, Bootlegger Tiki is an efficient place to start out. It’s based mostly within the former digs of one of many state’s unique tiki eating places, Don the Beachcomber.
These determined to entertain their youngsters can take a look at the Palm Springs Air Museum, which showcases dozens of previous planes, or go to the hilariously posed dinosaur statues that make for scientifically insensitive picture ops at Cabazon Dinosaurs, 25 minutes exterior of city.
![Modern art and design spans the Palm Springs Art Museum](https://cdn.minnesotamonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2023/08/A.-PSAM-Front-Lance-Gerber-2-scaled-e1691596417374.jpg)
Lance Gerber
Palm Springs’ personal public sculptures vary from visually arresting (a shimmering determine in repose) to genuinely puzzling (large infants), and it’s virtually unimaginable to overlook downtown’s towering statue of Marilyn Monroe, who leans ahead in her famed skirt-fluttering pose subsequent to the Palm Springs Art Museum. The museum is a greater guess for cultural enrichment: Its collections cowl Native American artwork, up to date and trendy sculptures and work, and eccentric examples of structure and furnishings design. These impressed by the town’s mod statements ought to peruse standout retro thrift retailers like Revivals, Mitchells, the Nice Artwork of Design, and Iconic Atomic.
For lodging, some resorts provide daylong credit, so visiting can change into its personal trip exercise. The Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa was enchanting sufficient to stage a latest season premiere of “The Bachelorette.” Located within the Santa Rosa Mountains, the Ritz-Carlton gives views from 650 ft over Palm Springs Valley, and La Serena Villas has personal, manicured bungalows.
One factor that’s virtually obligatory in any respect lodging choices: the glistening, electric-blue pool, a chlorinated oasis that’s, at its core, Palm Springs.
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