Morning and Breakfast at Ralph and Blade's House

Since Greg made his decision on houses last night, today will be a day of paperwork. Ralph does most everything right from his home office, and there was quite a bit of stuff to do. We had a small breakfast and I went out front to look at the neighborhood in the morning sunlight; certainly an inspirational view towards the mountains. Then I went back in to watch Greg and Ralph get stuff organized to the point where an official offer could be made with the listing agent. Once that was done, then we were all free for a while.

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Lunch and Shopping at the Paseo

Once the offer was faxed to the listing agent, we had some time to ourselves. The listing agent told us it would likely be late in the afternoon when his client could be apprised of the offer, or it might even be tomorrow. In any event, we decided to go do some sightseeing and have some lunch.

We headed south from Ralph's house towards Palm Desert, one of the Desert Cities of the Coachella Valley and about ten miles away. On the way, we stopped at a small local place that Ralph knew about and we had some lunch. Then we drove on down to Palm Desert and the area known as The Paseo.

All along this street there are art galleries, designer shops, upscale restaurants and just about everything that the well-heeled tourist or resident might want. Now that he was in line to acquire a house here in Palm Springs, Greg was in full shopping mode, looking for some artwork that he might place in his new home. We stopped into one art gallery where Greg found a glass wall sculpture that we both thought was very beautiful and which would be a nice piece for Greg's entryway (assuming he gets the house, of course). Greg was admirably restrained, though, not falling into the trap of buying anything until he is sure he will have a place to put it.

We continued to walk along El Paseo, a street made even more interesting by the constant views of the mountains to the west. On one corner, we came across a very interesting fountain, and one that I thought Fred might like to see, so I made a movie of it.

And a bit further down on the other side of the street was yet another unique fountain- this one an indoor, self-contained fountain. I made a movie of this fountain, too. The fountain wasn't cheap, but it wasn't outrageously expensive, either. As a matter of fact, if I were to run across this same fountain for the same price ($800) in Dallas, I would probably buy it. It was tall but didn't splash much, and it had a very pleasant sound.

About midway along The Paseo and on the south side of the street one finds The Gardens at El Paseo, the entry to which is shown here. The Gardens is a beautifully-landscaped, multi-level, very upscale shopping mall. It is not enclosed, since the weather here is so sunny and warm most of the time. In the middle of the series of mall buildings are some extensive gardens, which give the complex its name. When you come in from one end or the other, you might think you are out in the country, but you are just strolling along the pathways that crisscross the interior gardens. Use the player below to take a look at my movie of these garden pathways and you will see what I mean.

We were just wandering around, not doing any serious shopping. Ralph got some bottled water and we sat down at a table at one end of the mall. I took a movie of this end of the mall while explaining to Ralph how Palm Springs was something like Fort Lauderdale, with a well-defined busy season. You can watch my movie of the area here.

There was another really interesting fountain at this end of the mall and, more for Fred's benefit than anything else, I took a movie of it.

We spent a leisurely couple of hours here at The Paseo before we headed back towards Ralph's House.

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The Marriott Desert Springs Resort

On the way back to Ralph's house, we went right by one of the areas premier resort hotels- the Marriott Desert Springs. Apparently, Ralph had been there before and said we just HAD to see the interior of the hotel. So we just stopped for a few minutes and took a walk inside.

As it turned out, Ralph was quite right- the interior of the hotel was something incredible. To start off with, I think you will be amazed if you look at the movie I made inside the lobby of the hotel. That's right- there are boats that come into the lobby from outside and dock in a little lagoon.

The lagoon is fed by the water cascading down two extremely large fountains. The entire lobby is one huge atrium- probably the largest I have ever seen. Certainly it is much larger than any other Marriott I have seen; I am talking about the ones with the signature glass elevators.

And what was amazing, aside from the sheer size of the lobby, was the intricate nature of these fountains and waterfalls. The actual lobby level was perhaps fifty feet above the level of the lagoon; to get down there you followed an intricate series of steps and platforms, with the water going beside you and over you and with greenery all around. I filmed a movie of my walk from the lobby level down to where the boats were docked and I hope you will watch that movie with the player at left.

The whole thing was just incredible. The term "sybaritic" comes to mind; it is almost (but not quite) obscene how much money and time was spent to construct this interior lobby, and all just for show or ambience. I couldn't help but wonder how many hungry people could be fed for how long on the amount it took to build such an amazing thing and run it day to day. I know the water isn't a problem, but still...

The outside pool area and gardens was just as spectacular as the inside lobby, but, curiously, not so evocative of feelings of wastefulness. One expects nice landscaping and a great pool at a resort hotel. One just doesn't expect boats to be able to motor inside the lobby! You can take a look at my movie of the central pool area by using the player at right.

As we left the resort out the front entrance, I stopped to make a movie of the porte d'cochere fountain- certainly not as impressive as the rest of the building, but very nicely-done nevertheless.

We were back to Ralph's house in early afternoon and ready for another excursion.

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An Indian-Owned Outlet Mall

We are going to take one more trip this afternoon and that is to head west on I-10, past the Indian Casino at Cabezon and to the Indian-owned outlet mall just a mile beyond it. It's not that any of us particularly needs anything, but it is a short trip, the day is beautiful and the drive will show us some scenery we haven't seen on this trip.

In the aerial view at left, which is about two miles wide and about twenty miles from Palm Springs, you can see the Indian casino in the lower right. The complex is actually quite large, and there is both a casino and a hotel. This casino follows the current practice that allows Indian tribes to control what happens on their lands, even if what happens contravenes State or Federal law- at least as far as gaming is concern. This is just a thinly-veiled way of getting money to Indian tribes, though; I have even heard of a case where an Indian tribe petitioned the Congress to allow them to abandon their "sacred lands" and have them re-declared to be in a different spot- usually along an Interstate Highway. It's all very venal and has little if anything to do with Indian culture.

About a mile beyond the casino we came to the Desert Hills Outlets; I honestly don't know what the difference is between "regular" outlets and "premium" outlets except that I would expect the prices to be higher in the latter. Outlet malls are another thinly-veiled attempt to separate the consumer from his money, and this one was a good example. I didn't see anything here that I couldn't get just as cheaply, if not more cheaply, at a regular store on sale (as everything is at one time or another). And I didn't think this outlet mall was any different for being "premium" than any other outlet mall I have happened to stop at (very few, in any case, because I don't get any particular rush from shopping). I must admit that the mountain views did add a certain cachet to walking around here, but in my view not enough to justify the drive. In any event, we spent an hour or so here, and Greg and Ralph did actually shop for a few things. I made a movie of us walking around, and you can watch that movie with the player at left.

We stopped at another local place just down the highway on our way back; they were supposed to be known for their baked goods and candies, and I believe that Ralph and Greg also got a snack. I wandered around the store and came across a freezer container that, apparently, held buffalo products, and I thought the sign interesting enough to take a picture of for Fred.

At this point, I-10 is going through the western gap between the Coachella Valley and the Los Angeles basin, and the winds are usually quite stiff here most of the year. In fact, the entire Coachella Valley is fairly windy, and the winds are also steady- particularly at the western end, where the winds have a chance to funnel down. Because of that, this entire area is one gigantic wind farm, and there are wind turbines everywhere. They line the highway on both sides and they are also placed along the hilltop ridge lines. Here is another group of wind turbines off to our south.

In addition to these pictures, I also took a couple of movies as we were driving back to Palm Springs. One of them I just took to give you an idea of what the highway scenery looks like along this part of the valley. The other movie will show you more of the many hundreds of wind turbines that we passed on the way back to town. You can watch both movies with the players below:

Highway Scenery Wind Turbines

Although I didn't do any shopping, the ride over to the outlet malls and back was pleasant, and certainly worth the time.

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Walking Around Ralph Laramie's Neighborhood

When we got back to Ralph's house, there was still enough light for me to go wandering around the neighborhood, and so that is what I did while Greg and Ralph looked over the response they had gotten from the listing agent for the house that Greg wanted to get.

I have marked the location of the development where Ralph lives on the high-level map at the left and, for reference, I have also marked the location of the Museum of the Desert and the Museum Trail trailhead and also the approximate location of the house that Greg is interested in. Palm Springs is very car-oriented and spread out, but it is fairly easy to get around. I would imagine that the travel time between Greg's house and the Museum Trail is only about five minutes, while getting from his house to Ralph's would be about fifteen or twenty. Palm Springs is a grid and with the mountains as a constant reference it is pretty hard to get turned around.

Ralph lives in a development called St. Augustine near the Mission Hills Club in a part of town that is not yet fully developed. St. Augustine is, essentially, a gated community, and there seem to be only two ways in and out of it. One is the north entrance off 35th Avenue, the entrance that is closest to Ralph's house and the one in the previous picture. The other entrance, not so big and grand, comes in directly off Davall Drive. This development is fully built-out, but, as you will see shortly, across the street there is another large development that is just getting started.

First, let's take a quick stroll around the neighborhood, and you can see what it is like. Leaving Ralph's house and going west three houses you come to the entry drive on the north side and the central greenway on the south side of the street. This central greenway and park (watch the movie at left) runs entirely through the middle of the development. It is full of walkways, ponds and pools, and each of the ponds and pools seems to have a fountain. The ponds and pools seem all to be connected via a system of little streams and, if I remember correctly, there were two different systems that both sloped towards the center of the greenway where the pumps underwater recirculated the water through each system over and over. The result was a constant sound of gently flowing water and the splash of the fountains. The movie you just saw looks south through the greenway from Ralph's street.

I continued walking around the perimeter street, first going west then south at the corner of the development. Walking south along Camino Pacifico (watch the movie at right), I could see all the way to the tops of the San Jacinto Mountains; the air was quite clear (and I think that due to the pretty constant winds, the air in Palm Springs is usually quite good). The houses were all attractive and moderate in size (my guess would be from 2000-3000 square feet). They had all been designed to blend together, both in architectural style and in color, and again my guess is that the development has pretty strict rules about what you can and can't do.

One area of individuality, though, seemed to be in the individual landscaping. While most of the houses had traditional lawns (small ones, though) a fair number of the houses chose the zeriscaping route (low- or no-maintenance desert plants, often with sand or rock yards rather than grass). There were a couple of real standouts. One house (at the yellow star on Vista Del Agua) chose rocks, sand, palms and cactus as the landscaping, and also the interesting touch of fake dried-up streambeds that were defined by tumbled rocks. Take a look at that house here.

An even more imaginative example was the house on Vista Hermosa (the other yellow star). Here, the owners had actually built a flowing stream and the entire front yard had an old mine motif- the water coming out of an overturned pot at the high point in the yard and flowing across the yard, under the walk and down to a pool to be recirculated. A picture really doesn't do this yard justice, so I hope you will look at the movie I took of it.

As you can see on the aerial view, each of the interior streets that dead ends at the central greenway also has an access path from the cul-de-sac into the greenway, and at Vista Hermosa I took that access path back into the greenway park, and then walked a bit south and then back north through the park to get a better feel for it. It was really a wonderful open space, and it certainly would appear to me to make living in St. Augustine something a bit more special than in some plain tract-home development. As I walked back north to Camino Pacifico, I took another movie in the greenway, and you can watch that movie here.

Entrance to the New "Mission Shores" Development

Across 35th Avenue from St. Augustine is the entrance to a new development called "Mission Shores." The entrance looked interesting, so I wanted to walk across the street to take a look. The first thing that struck me was the entry. It is an incredible construction that runs along 35th in both directions and then curves into the development entry; this will undoubtedly be another gated entry. But the really neat thing is all the fountains that have been integrated into the walls of the entry. They are hard to describe but really quite beautiful. I took a movie of them, beginning by looking west along the wall along 35th Avenue and then curving around and walking into the development itself. I hope you will watch that movie with the player at left.

I found it continually amazing how many water features there are throughout Palm Springs and the other Desert Cities. Almost every development or even large apartment complex had one, and it seemed that the grander the development the bigger and more spectacular the water feature. St. Augustine's is inside the development, but most developments had them at the entrance or both. Mission Shores has both, for the development is built around an interior lake, shown here.

At the end of the entry drive, the main street of the development branches off to the right and left, and across the street there is an access point for the lake itself. At this access point, there was another beautiful waterfall and even some boats, which I assume the residents will be able to use. This series of waterfalls was also pretty amazing, and I hope you will watch the movie that I made of them by using the player here.

I left the Mission Shores development (the yellow arrow in the aerial view at right points into the development, which is across the street from the subdivision in which Ralph and Blade live) and returned to Ralph's house (red star at right) to find Ralph and Greg outside by the pool. Apparently, they had sent some other materials and a revised offer to the listing agent after getting some pushback by the owner. Now, they told me, it will undoubtedly not be until sometime tomorrow before they hear back. I think Greg is getting excited about the house (which is nice but a bad thing in negotiating); in any case, I certainly hope he is successful in getting it if that is what he wants. It is certainly the nicest house we saw and the entertaining potential is unlimited.

We sat and talked a while until Blade got home and we went out to a Mexican Restaurant in town for dinner. I took this opportunity to take a couple of pictures of Ralph's pool area (looking west) and the hot tub in the northwest corner of the yard.

	November 16, 2004: Palm Springs Trip Day 5
	November 14, 2004: Palm Springs Trip Day 3
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