DESERT ADVENTURES – You haven’t experienced the REAL DESERT until you have taken an award-winning jeep or hiking tour with Desert Adventures, the original, largest, and most respected outdoor adventure company in the Palm Springs area.
Desert Adventures offers several EXCLUSIVE tours to a private 1,000 acre private preserve situated right on the San Andreas Fault. Visit a natural palm oasis, explore a recreated Indian Village, participate in an archeological dig, and learn all about the Cahuilla Indians on the Indian Cultural Adventure.
Tour a replica old mining camp, pan for gold, visit a homestead shack, explore a cowboy encampment and learn all about early explorers, gold-miners, homesteaders, cattle rustlers and cowboys on the Pioneer Adventure.
Explore incredible steep-walled canyons created by the San Andreas Fault and lean all about geology, earthquakes and our desert’s plants and animals on the Faultline Express Adventure. Visit the San Andreas Fault at sunset and witness the spectacular transition from day to night on a Twilight Adventure. Or travel up rugged back-country trails high into the Joshua Tree National Park on the Joshua Tree EXTREME Adventure.
Call Desert Adventures Toll Free at 1-888-440-JEEP (5337)
or locally at 1-760-340-2345 or visit www.red-jeep.com for tour information and prices.
Celebrities still retreat to Palm Springs, but today the city's economy focuses on tourism, real estate, health care, shopping, and gambling. It is a city of numerous festivals, conventions, and international events.
Palm Springs, because of its beauty and resort style of living, has had special appeal to senior citizens and the gay community.
With the peace and spirituality of its desert and mountain setting, and its many activities and points of interest, Palm Springs is again attracting the attention of international travelers, young people, and those who want to live in or retire to one of the most unusual and attractive resort areas in North America.
Indian Canyons, Palm Springs.
The Indian Canyons are an often overlooked wonder. The canyons surrounding Palm Springs and their associated resources are sacred to the Cahuilla and are historically important to Cahuilla history, scientists, and nature lovers. Tahquitz Canyon and three southern canyons are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Palm and Andreas Canyons are known as the world's largest and second largest California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) oases, with Murray Canyon listed as fourth. While in Palm Canyon, visit the Trading Post for hiking maps, refreshments, Indian art and artifacts, books, jewelry, pottery, baskets, weavings and conversational cultural lore.
Downtown's Palm Springs Walk of Stars, a long stretch of terrazzo stars embedded into the pavement, features celebrities and other notable figures who have lived and played in Palm Springs.
The world's largest rotating tramcars can be found at the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.
Constructed at Chino Canyon at the north end of town, tramway cars ascend two-and-a-half miles up a steep incline through five unique life zones to reveal dramatic, sweeping valley views from within San Jacinto Mountains. The ascent from desert floor to an altitude in excess of 8,500 feet is accompanied by a drop in temperature of 30 degrees or more, giving riders a cool respite from the heat on a hot summer day.
A wilderness area can be explored at the top of the tram and there is a restaurant with spectacular views.
In recent years, Palm Springs has become a shopping mecca for enthusiasts of mid-century-modern design. Vintage design, clothing, furniture, and thrift stores abound.
The Palm Springs International Film Festival, founded by former mayor Sonny Bono in 1990, draws film lovers and aficionados from around the globe, having become over time one of the nation's premiere film events. The Festival has an attractive film sales and distribution record and is seen by American distributors as one of the best Academy Award campaign marketing tools. It also features cultural events, filmmaker tributes, industry seminars and an annual black-tie gala award presentation.
The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films & Short Film Market (ShortFest) is the largest short film festival and market in North America, screens over 350 short films with a concurrent film market facility featuring over 2,400 shorts.
An Academy® sanctioned Festival, over the past 10 years, 50 of the short films nominated for Academy Awards® have been screened at the Festival prior to receiving their nominations. The Festival offers 20 awards in ten different categories, featuring cash prizes and/or film stock.
The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies stage-show spectacular brings one of the last of the authentic vaudeville shows still presented in the United States; one of the unique aspects of the show is that all of the performers are over the age of 55. The follies show is largely patronized by an older crowd to which it caters its similarly antiquated brand of humor.
Every Thursday evening downtown Palm Springs is transformed into Village Fest, featuring a diverse display of arts and crafts, a certified farmer's market, food, and live entertainment on beautiful Palm Canyon Drive. Roads are cut off to traffic, granting pedestrians and merchants full access to the area.
The Palm Springs Historical Society maintains Palm Springs' largest collection of historical photographs, objects, and ephemera. It also maintains two museums, the McCallum Adobe and the Cornelia White House, on site at the Village Green in downtown Palm Springs.
The Agua Caliente Cultural Museum is a non-profit organization interpreting the history and culture of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and other Cahuilla peoples. Located on the Village Green in downtown Palm Springs, its collections include an Indian basketry collection and other Native American cultural artifacts. The ACCM will open a new facility on Tahquitz Canyon Way in late 2008 .
Housed in modernist masterpiece designed by architect E. Stewart Williams, the Palm Springs Art Museum features contemporary and Western American art, changing exhibits, the Annenberg Theater, and curiously an Indian basketry collection.
The Agua Caliente Spa Resort Hotel and Casino offers gambling opportunities, restaurants, and spa facilities. The spa facilities draw their thermal waters from the original hot springs which gave rise the names "Palm Springs" and "Agua Caliente."
Water activities are always popular in desert climates and the Knott's Soak City offers an escape from the heat of Palm Springs. They have two-story waterslides and lazy river pools among other attractions and eateries along the 16 acre property.
The Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium is a glimpse of old Palm Springs and features 3,000 examples of desert cacti and other desert plants, grouped by geographic regions.
The Palm Springs Air Museum is a non-profit educational institution whose mission is to exhibit and educate about World War II combat aircraft and the role the air crews had in achieving this great victory. The museum has the largest collection of World War II military aircraft in the world as well as other World War II historical items like photographs and videos.
The collection is not limited to airplanes, it hosts many automobiles from the 1920s and 1930s as well. The museum is over 70,000 square feet and many of the tour guides are former pilots that want to share their knowledge of aviation to all of the visitors to the Palm Springs Air Musem.
