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Car rentals in Palm Springs
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What first-timers get wrong in Palm Springs
Summer is a real hazard, not an inconvenience, with June to September regularly over 110 degrees. The Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon are tribal land with their own admission and their own closing times, and they shut in summer afternoons. Hotels attach resort fees on top of the quoted rate. Modernism Week in February fills the valley a year out.
What's actually worth your time in Palm Springs
The Aerial Tramway lifts you from desert floor to over eight thousand feet in about ten minutes in a rotating car, and the temperature at the top runs thirty to forty degrees cooler, which in July is not a novelty but the point. The Indian Canyons on Agua Caliente land hold real palm oases. Mid-century houses like the Kaufmann are private; you look from the kerb.
What things cost in Palm Springs
The tramway costs around thirty-five dollars return for adults, the single biggest fixed expense of a visit. Art Museum admission is in the mid-teens with a free window on Thursday evenings. Indian Canyons entry runs around fifteen. Hotel rates invert with the season: cheap in August, tripled in February and March, plus a resort fee that is rarely optional.
Palm Springs with kids, realistically
Children improve the tram rather than endure it, provided you pack jackets for the summit. The Living Desert in Palm Desert combines a zoo with a botanical garden and a giraffe feeding, and the Children's Discovery Museum sits in Rancho Mirage. From June through September, plan nothing outdoors between ten and five; heat here injures small children quickly.
When the weather turns in Palm Springs
Rain is close to irrelevant, at under six inches a year. The equivalent problem is heat, and the indoor day it forces is the same list: the Art Museum on a Thursday, the Air Museum's hangars, the Cultural Plaza, El Paseo's shops in Palm Desert, and the casino floors, which are the only genuinely cold buildings in town at four in the afternoon.