February 3rd – Our first two days have been taken up with getting our bearings, grocery shopping, and a bit of touring. Yesterday, we found Ralph’s a grocery store not too far from the house and stocked up on veggies, fruit, soup fixins and a bit of meat. As always, there are many deals if one shops at the same store every time – I think I have supermarket cards from most major chains! Ralph’s just has a courtesy scan for Canadians who are only visiting, so that saved us $16 making our first shop only $84 and I don’t have yet another card. The prices don’t seem to be too much different than at home…but then you have to add 30% for the exchange. Our plan is to dine out for lunch some days and eat in at night. You can have really nice lunches at some of the ‘high’ spots in town for a much more reasonable price than in the evening and the portions are smaller.
We found the local public tennis courts in the afternoon and just hit the ball back and forth for a bit. It’s interesting that I never shop at Walmart at home, but that’s the first place I head for some things when I’m in the States (eg – tennis balls). I even bought a few more groceries there! In the US they have smaller Walmarts that are just grocery stores, called Walmart Market, but George says he read that they aren’t profitable and will likely be shut down.
Another common occurrence while on vacation is competitive Scrabble – games won and lost tallied throughout the vacation. We didn’t bring our game hoping that there would be one here, which there isn’t. We thought of playing on our iPads but for some reason I can’t load my Facebook friends in my Scrabble game – a problem that has garnered much anger on various chat sites. Instead we downloaded Words With Friends – similar but a different board. Nancy won the first game of the vacation.
Today we headed off early to Palm Springs to do a walking tour of the downtown area. This is always a good way to find out the history of a city and hear about some of the new development that is taking place. The first white settler to the area was John McCallum in 1884, a lawyer from San Francisco, who saw promise in the valley if only water could be brought down from the mountains. He named the area Palm Valley and recruited members of the nearby Indian village, Agua Caliente, to help construct a 19-mile long ditch. Pioneers began to come to the area and then the railroad. Over the years he acquired more than 1,700 acres of what would become the most desirable land in America. After the death of his sons (from tuberculosis) his youngest daughter took an interest in his work and carried on his legacy after his death. I encourage you to read the article at McCallum History to find out more about this visionary.
Three women significantly impacted the development of Palm Springs over the years: these included Pearl McCallum, Julia Carnell, independently wealthy wife of the CEO of NCR, who wintered in Palm Springs and Nellie Coffman, wife of a doctor who moved to Palm Springs in 1905. They each contributed in some way to creating a vacation paradise that would become a world-class resort.
Eventually movie stars began to frequent the city since it was close to Hollywood but without the paparazzi. Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Liberace, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and many others have owned a home here at one time or another. Others, like Carol Channing, still live here and can be seen around town from time-to-time. As in Hollywood, they run a tour here to visit the homes of the stars!
Downtown Palm Springs today has retained a fair bit of its historical architecture – Spanish adobe buildings with the red tile roofs. It also prides itself on having the largest concentration of mid-century modern architecture (1950s). The downtown core is a bit tired and has lost much of its luster due to the rise of neighbouring communities such as Palm Desert. Residents are hoping that two new hotels and accompanying services will provide a much needed boost to the area attracting back some of the large stores that moved farther down the valley.
The house at the top left is John McCallum’s first home made of Adobe bricks. Imagine 6 people living in it – no running water, no electricity, in the middle of the desert.
The bottom left is La Plaza, one of America’s first malls built at at cost of $1M by Julia Carnell, using her own funds, in the middle of the depression. It was unique because it included apartments and bungalows for rent as well as a dorm for single girls and another for chauffeurs. You could rent by the day, week, month or season quite reasonably.
The larger picture is Sonny Bono, who of course was mayor of Palm Springs (1988-92) and then the Republican Congressman (1995-98) until his untimely death in a skiing accident. He was instrumental in spearheading the creation of the Palm Springs International Film Festival held annually in January.
Left – Condos in downtown area are still being built in the Spanish style.
Right – dog watering station circa 1935.
After all our walking, it was lunch time so we headed off to Spencer’s a very popular restaurant at the famous Palm Springs Tennis Club. We were fortunate to get a table despite not having a reservation.
Now it’s home for soup and salad…and another game of Scrabble!
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