Palm Springs and the Desert Resorts

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TRAVEL GUIDE

With the Palm Springs area’s year-round sunshine, luxurious spas, chef-driven restaurants, and see-and-be-seen pool parties, it's no wonder that Hollywood A-listers and weekend warriors make the desert a getaway.

The Palm Springs area has long been a playground for the celebrity elite. In the 1920s Al Capone opened the Two Bunch Palms Hotel in Desert Hot Springs (with multiple tunnels to help him avoid the police); Marilyn Monroe was discovered poolside in the late 1940s at a downtown Palm Springs tennis club; Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned here—the list goes on. There's a similar desert resort feel (replete with luxury lodgings, golf courses, and shopping enclaves) in the communities of Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, and Desert Hot Springs.

Palm Springs is laden with urban-chic contemporary artwork (check out Palm Canyon Drive in downtown or the Backstreet Arts District in the southeast end of town). Winter events celebrate the city's modernist design aesthetic as well as its connections with the film industry. Over the years, the desert arts scene has blossomed as spectacularly as the wildflowers of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, to the south of the city. Each April, attention centers on Indio, where the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, California’s largest outdoor concert, attracts droves of rock music lovers from Los Angeles and across the globe. Yucca Valley and other artistic communities all have noteworthy galleries, art installations, and natural scenic views.