GETTING
AWAY
A Modern Retro Getaway
In true resort fashion, I stretch out poolside
on a chaise in the pleasant early hours at La Quinta
Resort and Club. With a book propped up on my knees,
I am studiously taking to heart the message placed
on my bed last evening, imploring me to relax,
renew and reconnect with myself.
So engrossed in my commission, I barely spare
a glance for the guests making tracks through my
retreat, sporting glaring white sun visors and
rackets and golf clubs slung over a shoulder. No
doubt late for a morning tee time, I think rather
languidly, not the least impelled to budge from
my station.
At just four hours west of Phoenix, Palm Springs
is the perfect weekend getaway for those that want
to escape a large hot valley to err … well a smaller
hot valley. To be honest, up until now, it has
always struck me as an enigma why the rich and
famous choose to vacation in a desert.
But on closer examination, the area does possess
some rather nice physical attributes.
For one thing, the Coachella Valley is small enough
that from any given location you can spot four
mountain ranges surrounding you from every direction.
It makes for a cozy atmosphere — cradled in the
laps of four majesties — each vowing to cast out
a protective shadowed appendage if ever the sun
provokes it.
The ranges consist of the Santa Rosa, San Jacinto,
little San Bernardino and San Gorgonio mountains.
Jacinto is rigged with the well-known Aerial Tramway,
which whisks its incumbents to the mountain cliffs,
shedding, along the way, 30 degrees of superfluous
heat like a five-year-old shimmies out of an itchy
sweater.
Visitors who stay to the valley floor should be
able to pick out a natural phenomenon in San Jacinto’s
lower peaks; the shape of an angel is said to appear
on the north-facing range.
It takes me a while to spot her, the “Angel of
the Mountain.” I study the postcard photo for a
clue, considering that postcards of natural phenomena
are akin to pictures of constellations with lines
drawn in connecting the dots.
And true to form I notice an inset image, which
guides my eye to a cleft in the ridge contoured
by light and shadow. Smaller than I expect, a renaissance
angel appears to hover with her wings outstretched
against the mountain, like a moth flush to a wall.
The angel presides over an army of spindly white
windmills that stand to attention in the valley
below. The wind tunnel along the San Gorgonio pass
produces enough energy to power the mills three
hundred days a year.
So fertile is the Coachella Valley that it reaps
the wind and a few things more. It turns out, in
the case of Palm Springs and her satellites, the
term “desert oasis” is more than just a bit of
tourism hyperbole.
Date farms once comprised the central valley,
which have more recently been encroached by development
in a diverse collection of townships bent on cultivating
that still more-precious commodity: the tourist.
The nine towns range from Indio, the largest and
oldest, to Indian Wells, which — like the tiny
principality of Monaco — makes up for what it lacks
in size with sheer lucre.
Situated along the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains,
the town of La Quinta was incorporated around its
historic resort and club, which dates back to the
1920s. Since then the resort has sprawled out like
a suburban shopping center; Spanish casitas queue
up around pool and hot tub in a nucleus that duplicates
itself at least a dozen times throughout the property.
The grounds are padded with bougainvillea and
tidy floral landscaping; crisp Spanish casitas
are accented in electric blue and kitschy Spanish
tiles. Victorian lampposts balance flower planters
on their wrought iron posts or suspend placards
that point visitors toward the fitness center or
the gift shop in an incongruous Victorian scrawl.
Eighteen historic garden bungalows are situated
at the heart of the property, an area noticeably
void of the ubiquitous swimming pools. Each of
these cottages is autonomous of the others; windows
swing open on real hinges, betraying their vintage
in tension lines and scars. One such bungalow is
memorialized as the site where Frank Capra penned
the screenplay for It Happened One Night and
presumably other classics, including It’s a
Wonderful Life.
Like many of the surrounding communities, La Quinta,
the town, wasn’t incorporated until the early 1980s.
However, Palm Springs, the valley’s most recognizable
insignia, has been a around since 1938, long enough
to collect mementos from the layers of golden-era
celebrities that tripped their way through her
village. She hit her stride in the 1950s courtesy
of the modernist architects, who laid down masterpieces
in her desert.
Modernist architecture is interesting in the sense
that — though the homes are now historic — the
style is clearly futuristic; it’s like watching
a classic movie depicting the future … where the
future is dated ten years in a past that never
quite unfolded as filmmakers imagined.
The experimental Alexander neighborhoods are the
best places to enjoy modernism in its natural habitat.
Though not as magnificent as the celebrity-commissioned
specimens that dot the mountainsides or repose
grandly in star-studded districts, taking up whole
pages in glossy architectural guidebooks, they
are eminently more approachable.
In contrast to the other, exploring one of the
Alexander Construction Co. modernist tract districts
is like walking through a meadow flourishing with
butterflies — or butterfly roofs in this instance
— opposed to smudging your nose against the glass
encasing a rarer variety.
They are relatively scarce in square footage,
but each of the homes rolls together a menu of
modernist signatures: flat and butterfly roofs,
breezeways, and circular accents. Modernist desert
architecture seeks to blur the lines between indoor
and out, an abstraction characterized through low-slung
floor plans and generous high line windows.
In the late afternoon, about the hour I resume
my poolside post, I finally see in the desert what
its architects tried so hard to bring home.
The resort is still awash in light but the mountains
do an admirable job running interference to the
sun’s harsher rays; the wind mills spare a bit
of their harvest to ruffle the palms that regard
me like gangly sentinels on four corners.
Their collective rustle roars like a distant oasis
waterfall or the graduating clapping of an audience
replete with approval, as though applauding a grand
discovery.
Lindsay DeChacco is associate editor of Highroads
magazine.
Photo courtesy of La Quinta Resort and Club
If you go:
La Quinta Resort and Club
49-499 Eisenhower Dr., La Quinta
800-598-3829
Morton’s Steakhouse
74880 Country Club Dr., Palm Desert
760-340-6865
Palm Spring Tours and More
14080 Palm Dr., #175, Desert Hot Springs
760-329-2204
