I moved to Southern California many years ago to an area called the Inland Empire. It’s located about 70 miles east of Los Angeles and only about 50 miles from the popular vacation destination, Palm Springs.
I’ll be honest, I had no idea where Palm Springs was located when I decided to move to SoCal. I learned that it was near where I was going to be living when I drove cross country on my way to my new home. My first impression was made on a day when the winds in the area were blowing like a hurricane and I couldn’t see the highway in front of me due to the sand storm. If I really wanted to be blinded while driving, I would have stayed in the land of blizzards that I was moving from. Yea, I watched the Rose Bowl one New Year’s day and decided to make the move as a result. I know my California neighbors hate me and I kept my drapes drawn most of the time.
So what was my first impression of the landing spot for so many Snow Birds…a desolate wasteland of a desert. Of course, my point of view might have been tarnished by my first drive through the area, but the longer I lived nearby and with the many times I visited or passed through Palm Springs, my view solidified…it’s a desolate wasteland of a desert! I will now qualify my response. I’ve been in the Coachella Valley (location of Palm Springs and other resort communities) during its pleasant times… aka winter…and its worst times, the rest of the year. I worked in Palm Springs at the local magazine for a short time and it was well over 100 degrees every day and it felt like the heat could melt steel.
With all that said, I am shocked by the people I now meet that make a concerted effort to visit Palm Springs as often as they can, no matter what time of year. I understand the folks flying down here from the frozen tundra of states like North Dakota, Minnesota and that hostile foreign country, Canada (they are way too nice) to escape their endless winters for a couple of months but I know of people from Santa Barbara who look forward to vacationing in Palm Springs! I’m baffled. They already live in a heaven like setting.
If I had to choose between vacationing in either Palm Springs or Santa Barbara, it would be Santa Barbara, hands down. Both locations are favored by those of retirement age. They both have beautiful golf courses and wonderful places to shop, eat or have a drink but in Santa Barbara, residents don’t have air conditioners because it rarely gets hot enough to need one and Palm Springs is hell…literally. I’ve seen Satan riding around in a golf cart in one of those gated golf course communities. Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Santa Barbara is green because they get that stuff they call rain on a semi-regular basis. Palm Springs is brown and the only time they get rain is when the monsoons let loose and the flash floods wash away anything that might turn green. Did you know that Hollywood uses the sand dunes in Palm Springs to film movies that represent the desolate Shara Desert? Why do you ask? Because they are both desolate deserts and Palm Springs is closer to Hollywood. I thought that would be an easy one to figure out.
If you like celebrities, Palm Springs is a great place to go if you want to see some…of the streets named after the ones that used to live there and have died. Frank Sinatra Drive, Dean Martin Drive, Bob Hope Drive, Dinah Shore Drive and I could go on and on. Today’s celebrities got smart and are moving to Santa Barbara and they’re not insisting on having streets named after them! A few include Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Bridges, Don Johnson and more. Of course, they did have a big mud slide in the area that washed away a few of these celebrity homes, but the drives to their other homes near Hollywood are much shorter than trying to get back from the desert.
Another plus for Santa Barbara is they can park their very expensive yachts in one of the many harbors that dot the coast near Santa Barbara. In Palm Springs, their boat would be sitting on a trailer waiting for the next big Noah-like flood. If they really wanted to use it, they could drive to Santa Barbara to drop it in the ocean.
I now live closer to Santa Barbara than Palm Springs. I have in-laws who live in Santa Barbara so I get to visit the area on a regular basis. I enjoy my little sojourns to this beautiful resort community. I still go back to Palm Springs once in a while. Usually for a free round of golf but I tend to escape the place as soon as I can. I know there will be those who will push back but I will stand my ground.
If Palm Springs is such a nice place, why didn’t they build a mission there like they did in Santa Barbara? I’ll tell you why. When Satan Tempted Jesus, it was in the desert, so Satan lives in the desert…riding around in a golf cart wearing a pair of those silly golf pants.
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