United States · off the beaten path
Hidden Gems in Palm Springs — Trip Planner
Planning this trip in Palm Springs? Here’s how to decide what’s worth your time. The lesser-known corners of Palm Springs most tourists miss — offbeat tours and local-favorite experiences, bookable on the spot.
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Top experiences in Palm Springs
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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 to eat in Palm Springs
The date shake is the genuinely local drink, because the Coachella Valley grows nearly the whole American date crop; Shields Date Garden out in Indio has sold them since the 1920s beside a film about date pollination. Grapefruit and Medjool dates fill the winter farm stands. Las Casuelas Terraza on Palm Canyon has run the same Mexican menu for decades.
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.
Palm Springs after dark
Arenas Road, a single block behind Palm Canyon Drive, holds one of the densest concentrations of gay bars in the western United States, and it sets the tone of the town's evenings. Bootlegger Tiki and Melvyn's at the Ingleside cover the cocktail and old-Hollywood ends. Thursday nights, Palm Canyon closes to traffic for VillageFest. In summer the whole thing starts after nine because it is still a hundred degrees.
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.