Dateline: Palm Desert, CA. This place - the greater Palm Springs area - probably has some of the best winter weather in the world: warm, dry, and unrelentingly sunny. No wonder it draws snowbirds from all over North America. Walking around a couple of large parking lots and looking at the license plates, we saw vehicles from MO, AK, OR, WY, ID, NC, BC, and Alberta. All that in maybe 15 minutes.
The snowbirds will be 'flying' away north in the next month. You really don't want to spend summer here, temperatures over 110 degrees F are common and the nights don't cool down much.
One of the things you see a lot of here is old gals trying their darnedest to look like young women. Spa time, gym time, salon time, and probably plastic surgery all seem to be lavishly applied. On the other hand, the desert sun is tough on skin; when they talk about "tanning" leather they could as well be talking about damage to the human epidermis.
We saw a classic case that the other DrC described as "well past her sell-by date" yet dressed like a 25 year old. That is very Palm Springs. You'd think that as much as they're spending on themselves, they'd be happy. You'd be wrong. These high maintenance older gals almost without exception have an angry, bitter facial expression, probably because the illusion they're trying to maintain doesn't really work and they know it. Chances are many of them find their life space threatened by younger trophy wives. Collectively they constitute the "Palm Springs Harpies," one of the less attractive aspects of the valley.
This whole region - Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Cathedral Springs, etc. - is laid out in a very unique manner. There is a main street roughly every mile, in a semi-grid and these have widely-ignored 45 mph speed limits although there are stop lights every mile. Traffic races around on these main "grid" streets.
In between there are some other streets but a lot of the land is tied up in truly huge gated communities, most of which include an 18 hole golf course, clubhouse, country club amenities, etc. In between are many strip malls anchored by a supermarket or a big box store, that part is typical CA. Stringing the whole area together is state highway 111, the old "main drag" before Interstate 10 was built.
