I loved Palm Springs before you did.
Before all the hipsters and the Beyonce hip-hoppers. Before Coachella and Stagecoach festivals were even a thing.
Actually, Palm Springs has always been my favorite place on planet earth.
And fine. Maybe you love Palm Springs a lot, too, but you probably don't love it as much as I do.
What I love about the desert is everything.
I love the colors. Palm Springs is all my favorite shades of pinks and blues and golds and greens. The desert landscape is one that people so often confuse for monotonous, but it's one that's actually brightly colored with wild flowers and cactus blooms, snake scales and iridescent bird feathers.
I love the smell of Palm Springs. It smells like citrus and heavily chlorinated pool water and SPF 75. It smells like clean, fresh air and also sometimes dusty like when a big gust of wind kicks up desert dirt into the air. I like how it smells like sprinkler water and home BBQ smoke and hot coffee in the hot morning.
Palm Springs tastes deliciously rich, like LG Prime Steakhouse cuts and anchovy Caesar salads made table-side. It tastes like ice-cold lemon water and whole Main lobsters from Jensen's Foods.
I love how Palm Springs looks both flat and tall at the same time. A low, narrow valley flanked on both sides by tall, rocky mountains that look fake in their majesty. Like painted, prop mountains on some Universal Studios movie set. I love that from the chaise by the pool, where heat shakes visibly off the baking concrete, you can notice the nearby peaks of the mountains capped with snow.
Palm Springs is both old and new. There is retro, neon signage all along Highway 111 and George Jetson-esque motels, painted hot pink and lime green. There are nods to old time Hollywood with stars printed on the sidewalks on Palm Canyon Drive and vintage cars parked in every lot. But there are also fresh coats of paint and 1 million strip malls with new furniture boutiques that sell fantastic mid-centry modern pieces and little day spas for pedicures and hot stone massages.
Palm Springs is both young and old. Gated retirement communities with clubhouse dinner specials that populate the spaces in the desert between the sprawling golf courses and tennis clubs but also trendy, young influencers that flock to hip hotels like The Saguaro and The Ace on the weekends for the Gram.
I like how the desert feels like sunburned skin and three extra hours of sunlight in the day, no matter the time of year. It's a place I can go to enjoy all my favorite things: the heat, great food, shopping, beautiful landscapes, peace and quiet. Where I can completely relax because I'm not there to site-see or adventure. I'm there to do nothing, really. Read and nap in heat that buzzes.
It's a place that's so fond in my memories. It makes me nostalgic for happy times with my family, young and careless in the summer. Birthday dinners for six and TCBY serves for an afternoon treat.
For as a long as I can remember, or as long as I've been living in California anyways, I've been vacationing in Palm Springs. Every August for my mother's birthday, we used to drive out to the desert for a whole week or more. Always we would stay in stay in a little row of rooms at the La Quinta Resort.
Then, today, forever, always, the La Quinta Resort is a dreamland gem. Here is not some charmlessly tall Ramada Inn with a swim-up bar, a Journey inspired soundtrack playing at the pool with a water slide for the kids.
No, this is a much classier place than that.
Quiet and romantic and ultra-private, the La Quinta Resprt is a flat, sprawling property nestled at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains. The little hotel rooms, housing quilted kings and queens, are stand-alone cottages built of bright, white stucco and capped with a roof of red Spanish tile. Window sills and doors are painted an electric blue shade that matches the color of the big sky and the inviting water of the 41 uniquely shaped swimming pools that are peppered sporadically all over the 45-acre property. There are magenta and orange bougainvillea flowers, cactus and succulents and swells of citrus, in exquisite gardens all around the resort. In the hot winds that blow through the desert, tall palms practice flexibility with impossible bends, pool water ripples gently and the smell of cactus flowers are twisted into the tangles of your pool wet hair.
In the afternoon, when the sun dips low behind the rocky ridges of the Santa Rosa's, the resort is blanketed in a welcome shade, but the heat persists. Relief comes in the form of a quick afternoon dip and carefully curated cocktails mixed together with fresh muddled fruit, juices and tequila and then finished with a champagne float and a mint garnish.
Ever since I was a little girl, I always fantasized about the La Quinta Resort being a romantic weekend get away destination for a lover and I. A place where we would escape to frequently on weekends for some much-needed alone time. A place where I would surely be married.
Can you imagine how exited I was to take Tim?
We went in October for Alison and Colin's wedding.
I packed a bag of my most flowery sundresses and little bikinis. I packed lace-up sandals, Daisy Duke jean shorts and coconut sunscreens and tanning oils. I also packed up a cooler of sour beers and snacks of dried mandarin orange slices and trail mix with chocolate chips. I was so excited to spend the weekend poolside, lounging with my lover, totally turned on by the hotness of the day and the hotness of my man.
I woke up him up early for maximum relaxation time. I held Tim's hand and guided him around the resort on a "pool hop" of sorts. At my insistence, we'd stop for a short time at one pool, only on occasion seeing another person, and jump in to cool down. Then on to the next! We lounged longer at some, the Hope Pool and the Lombard Pool, where there were no people, to read or nap and pound a beer. We skipped the pools with three or four other swimmers that I deemed too crowded. I pointed out to Tim yellow butterflies fluttering around in the succulent gardens and desert hawks circling overhead.
I wanted Tim to love it as much as I did. Palm Springs. La Quinta. The pools and the flowers and the whole thing. For him to look around and say, "You're right, Kate! This place is really great! Should we get married here?"
But actually, and it kills me so hard to tell you, Tim didn't like it at all. And not just La Quinta, but all of it. He didn't understand the fun to be had in pool hopping or in falling asleep in the sun for a few hours. Because for Tim, it's not a vacation unless there are sites to see, mountains to hike, tents to sleep in.
He thought of Palm Springs as just one giant strip mall. One Target after Best Buy after Ross after the other. And you know what? I get that. Because Palm Springs is a giant strip mall (and don't tell Tim but part of why I love the Palm Springs experience so much is because I get spend a whole day shopping for things I don't need at the Downtown Crossing DSW or at The River in Palm Desert).
Tim? He's just not that into the idea of taking a vacation to relax and shop. And me? That's all I want to do!
So then I tried really hard to explain to Tim the things about La Quinta that I thought he could love. That this wasn't some new, charmless, overpriced hotel hosting Coachella hipsters or timeshare owners like so many other Palm Springs spots. No, La Quinta Resort was a special place, unlike any other in the desert. Somewhere historic. Built in the 1920s for Hollywood's elites like Greta Garbo, Clarke Gable, and Frank Capra, La Quinta was meant as a quiet destination for those who need an escape from the limelight. In fact, Capra actually wrote the screenplay for Lost Horizon at a quiet poolside at La Quinta in 1937.
We left hotel so I could continue to try and convince Tim of the greatness of all of Palm Springs. The retro architecture and the desert landscape and the nods to Hollywood along Palm Canyon Drive.
I took him to breakfast in downtown Palm Springs at a trendy French restaurant called Farm. We drank French press coffee from vintage tea cups on an outdoor patio under a trellis overgrown with bougainvillea. I pointed to Bob Hope's house hidden up in the hills and to the gate of Smoke Tree Ranch where my Uncle George owns a home right next to Walt Disney's old ranch house.
Still, he was unimpressed.
And it made me really sad.
Tim was supposed to want to marry me here! Instead, his indifference nearly broke us up.
But, it's no matter, because even still I'll always love Palm Springs the very most.
And when I had the chance to spend a couple of days with my mother and her cousin and my Uncle George, not at La Quinta Resport, but at Smoke Tree Ranch a few weeks ago, I jumped in the car and drove down there so fast, without Tim.
And I loved it as much as I always do.
Smoke Tree Ranch is as special to me as the La Quinta Resort and I have equally fond memories of summers and springs spent on the property. Unlike La Quinta, which is a public hotel where anyone, you and me, can make reservations, Smoke Tree Ranch is a 60+ year old property with plots of land for individual ownership of homes. I only get to go there when Uncle George is down from Tacoma and I am invited to come, or politely invite myself.
In the early days of Smoke Tree, only barbed wire fences separated the Ranch from the surrounding desert. Today, 85 homes now make up the community of residents on the 400+ acres of land, but the property still feels very much like remote ranch in middle of an empty desert.
I used to come here to visit my grandfather when he was still alive. He also had a small cottage on the property and I used to visit him when he was down from Washington in the winter months. I would pick lemons from his trees and swim in the clubhouse pool. We would eat dinners of Alaskan king crab legs and prime rib in the club house. Always two scoops of vanilla ice cream for dessert.
My grandfather loved to tell stories about how Walt Disney used to live on the property. About how Walt often accompanied his wife out on breakfast horseback rides, a ranch tradition that frequently ended with a pancake breakfast in the desert. A large skillet over open fire to cook up the pancakes and enjoy their breakfast in the fresh, outdoor air.
I like how at Smoke Tree Ranch the houses are unsuspectingly huge. Long desert ramblers, their size camouflaged by the most spectacularly curated cactus gardens that are designed to look naturally placed and genuine.
I woke up early to take a long walk around the property at sunrise.
This is the time when the desert buzzes with wildlife because the air and the ground are still cool. I saw bunnies and majestically colored hummingbirds. I saw quails and a roadrunner, butterflies and big beetles.
I swam in the pool in Uncle George's backyard, dozed off on a floatie shaped like a watermelon wedge and read Steinbeck in a chaise padded with a thick, comfy cushion. I cruised in the golf cart with my mom and our cousin Phyllis. We went shopping at Target and DSW. My mom insisted on lunch at Frankinbun and I bought coconut milk mochas for all at Koffi for breakfast.
Palm Springs is always all the things I need.
The weather is always perfect and the rates for a room at La Quinta Resort are so reasonable in the summer, that it's almost stupid. It's easy for me to get there from Santa Barbara. With only a three hour drive to the desert (when I leave at the right time) I can be in relaxation mode in next to no time.
When it's time for me to leave, I always feel revitalized and happy and restored. And at the same time, I feel so sad to go. Can't I stay here, forever and always, in a bikini, skin hot and cracking like a lizard, sheer sundresses and cat eye sunglasses?
I'd like it if we, Tim and I, could go back and try it again. (We are actually going to the Yucca Valley this weekend for a night of desert glamping. Think queen bed in a tipi with a big outdoor bathtub in the desert. And although I'm beyond excited, it's not exactly the Palm Springs vacation I'm talking about.)
What I mean is that I'd like it if we could go and spend another romantic weekend just us two at La Quinta. We could sip on cups of water cooled with cucumber, or fuck, I'd even drink a beer poolside. We might get a little color in our skin and fool around in the hot tub at night when no one is watching. At sunset time, a romantic walk around the property, hand in hand, in love with each other and with La Quinta and all of the desert. Tim might treat us to a couples massage or a desert bath at the La Quinta Spa because he knows it's my absolute favorite thing in the world. (You actually haven't lived until you've treated yourself to a La Quinta Bath Ritual Treatment. For 20 minutes you get to soak in a deep, porcelain tub, in water steeped with soothing bath truffles, in your own, private garden courtyard, date palms swaying against the backdrop of the mountains, and little breezes blowing around flower and fruit fragrances.)
I could make us reservations for dinner at LG's Prime Steakhouse and we could order gin martinis with blue cheese stuffed olives, filthy dirty, just like how I like.
And I know he could love it, too.
He just needs to give it a second chance.
And then he'll look around and say, "You're right, Kate! This place is really great! Should we get married here?"
And I'll just say, "Duh."
