Rebecca Engel
Palm Springs sits in a wide desert valley with a 10,000 foot mountain standing right behind it, and that one fact shapes almost everything about the place. You can be floating in a pool at noon and standing in pine forest an hour later. The town is small enough to cross in ten minutes, which means you’re never far from the next thing on your list.
It’s also a town with a very particular look. Low flat rooflines, breeze block walls, bright front doors and cactus gardens instead of lawns. Some of the best things to do in Palm Springs cost nothing more than the time it takes to walk a few blocks and look up.
1. Ride The Aerial Tramway Up Mount San Jacinto
The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway climbs about two and a half miles up the cliffs of Chino Canyon, and the floor of the car rotates slowly as it goes so everyone gets the same view. The ride takes roughly ten minutes.
What makes it worth doing isn’t the ride, it’s what waits at the top. The mountain station sits at 8,516 feet, where the temperature can run around 30 degrees cooler than the valley floor. In winter there’s often snow up there while people are sitting by pools below.
Mount San Jacinto State Park starts right outside the door, with more than 50 miles of trails and a few short loops that don’t ask much of you. Bring a jacket even in summer, because the difference catches people out.
2. Walk The Palm Oasis At Indian Canyons
Indian Canyons is land belonging to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, and it holds three separate canyons worth your time. Palm Canyon is the headline one, with what’s said to be one of the largest California fan palm oases in North America.
The trail runs along the canyon floor between palms whose trunks are wrapped in thick skirts of old dried fronds. There’s water running through parts of it, which feels genuinely strange after driving through open desert to get there.
Andreas Canyon and Murray Canyon sit nearby and see fewer people. If you only have time for one, make it Palm Canyon, but the other two reward anyone willing to walk a bit further.
3. Hike To The Waterfall In Tahquitz Canyon
Tahquitz Canyon is just south of downtown, close enough that you can be on the trail minutes after leaving your hotel. The loop runs about two miles and climbs steadily over rock steps.
The payoff is a 60 foot waterfall at the top of the canyon. It’s seasonal, so it runs hard in spring after winter rain and can thin out badly by late summer. Check before you go if the falls are the whole reason you’re going.
Even without much water, the canyon itself is worth the walk. The rock is bare and pale and the trail gives you a clear view back down over the city.
4. Drive The Mid Century Modern Neighborhoods
Palm Springs has one of the densest collections of mid century modern architecture anywhere, and most of it is private homes on ordinary residential streets. That means the whole thing is free to look at as long as you stay on the pavement.
Areas like Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas are full of flat rooflines, breeze block screens, butterfly roofs and front doors painted in colors nobody would risk today. Barrel cacti sit where lawns would be in any other town.
If you’d rather have someone explain what you’re looking at, small guided cart tours run through the neighborhoods and cover the celebrity houses and the Hollywood history attached to them.
5. Spend An Afternoon At The Palm Springs Art Museum
The Palm Springs Art Museum sits right downtown and makes a good move on a hot afternoon, which is half the reason people end up there. The collection leans modern and contemporary, with a strong showing of glass and sculpture.
There’s also a real focus on desert art and on the architecture the region is known for, so it connects to the town outside rather than feeling dropped in from somewhere else.
The building itself is worth a look before you go in. Check the current hours before turning up, since they shift with the season.
6. Wander The Cactus Paths At Moorten Botanical Garden
Moorten Botanical Garden was founded in 1938 and it’s small, family run and completely unlike a municipal botanical garden. Narrow sandy paths wind between thousands of desert plants packed in close on both sides.
The Cactarium is the part people remember, a greenhouse crammed with rare cactus and succulent species. Golden barrel cacti sit in groups along the paths outside like they’ve been arranged for a photograph.
You can walk the whole thing in under an hour. It’s one of the cheapest things to do in Palm Springs and one of the most photographed.
7. See The Warbirds At The Palm Springs Air Museum
The Palm Springs Air Museum keeps a large collection of flying and static aircraft, with a heavy focus on World War II. Many of the planes are kept in flying condition rather than parked as display pieces.
The hangars are open and you can get close to most of the aircraft. Volunteers are often around, and a good number of them have flown or worked on the machines they’re standing next to.
It’s a solid rainy day option, though rainy days are rare here. More usefully, it’s a solid 110 degree day option.
8. Visit The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza
The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza opened downtown recently and covers close to six acres, built around a museum of roughly 48,000 square feet. It tells the story of the Agua Caliente people on their own land and in their own words.
The campus includes a gathering plaza and an oasis trail planted with native desert species, so you can walk the grounds even if you’re short on time for the museum itself.
There’s also a spa on site fed by the hot mineral spring the band holds sacred, which is the spring the town was named for in the first place.
9. Go To VillageFest On A Thursday Night
Every Thursday evening Palm Canyon Drive closes to traffic and fills with more than 180 stalls. VillageFest runs from 6 to 10 in the cooler months and starts an hour later in summer.
You’ll find art, crafts, produce, jewelry and a long run of food stands, plus buskers working the crowd. It’s the one night the main street belongs to people on foot.
If your trip includes a Thursday, build the evening around this. If it doesn’t, it’s worth shifting your dates by a day.
10. Stroll Palm Canyon Drive And Find Forever Marilyn
Palm Canyon Drive is the main downtown strip and it’s built for wandering. Galleries, vintage stores, restaurants with patios and a steady run of shops selling things you didn’t plan to buy.
Forever Marilyn stands nearby, a 26 foot sculpture that draws a permanent scrum of people taking the same photo. Love it or roll your eyes at it, you’ll end up walking past it.
Mornings and evenings are the times to do this. The middle of the day in summer will send you straight back indoors.
11. Tour The Gardens At Sunnylands
Sunnylands sits in Rancho Mirage and was the winter home of Walter and Leonore Annenberg, who hosted presidents and royalty there for decades. The estate is now open to the public.
The visitor center and its nine acres of gardens are free to walk, planted with desert species arranged in sweeping blocks of color and texture. There’s a cafe and a short film about the property’s history.
House tours run separately and book out well ahead, sometimes weeks. The estate closes over the hottest part of summer, so check the calendar before making the drive.
12. Meet The Giraffes At The Living Desert
The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens sits about 25 minutes from Palm Springs in Palm Desert, and it focuses on desert species from around the world rather than trying to cover everything.
Giraffe feeding is the thing most people come for, and it runs at set times through the day. There are also big cats, bighorn sheep and a large garden section planted with desert flora.
Go early. The animals are active in the morning and so are you, and by afternoon the whole place slows down in the heat.
13. Climb Through Cabot’s Pueblo Museum
Cabot’s Pueblo Museum in Desert Hot Springs is a four storey pueblo style house that one man, Cabot Yerxa, built by hand over decades out of salvaged material. Nothing about it is square or standard.
There are 35 rooms, 150 windows and 65 doors, almost none of them matching. Walking through it feels less like a museum visit and more like being inside somebody’s very long project.
Hours are shorter in summer than the rest of the year, so confirm before driving out.
14. Soak In The Mineral Water At Desert Hot Springs
Desert Hot Springs sits on an aquifer of naturally hot mineral water, and a run of small spa hotels has grown up around it. Many are modest places with a few pools each rather than big resorts.
Day passes are common, so you don’t have to stay overnight to use them. Pools are usually kept at a range of temperatures so you can work your way between them.
It’s a completely different pace from the pool scene in Palm Springs proper, and it’s about fifteen minutes up the road.
15. Find The Palm Oasis At Coachella Valley Preserve
The Coachella Valley Preserve protects thousands of acres of desert, including the Thousand Palms Oasis, which sits directly on the San Andreas Fault. The fault is what pushes the water to the surface and lets the palms grow.
A boardwalk runs through the densest part of the grove, where the light goes green and the temperature drops noticeably. Longer trails head out into open desert from the same trailhead.
There’s a visitor center built from palm logs. The whole place sees a fraction of the traffic Indian Canyons does.
16. Float Over The Valley In A Hot Air Balloon
Balloon flights launch at sunrise, when the air over the valley is still and cool. You lift off in the half light and watch the sun come up over the mountains from a few thousand feet.
From up there the shape of the place makes sense. Green golf courses and pools laid out in tight grids, hard desert everywhere around them, and the wind farm turning in the pass.
Flights run in the cooler months and are weather dependent, so build in a spare morning if you can.
17. Shop The Vintage Stores On North Palm Canyon
The Uptown Design District on North Palm Canyon is lined with vintage and consignment stores, and the stock matches the town. Mid century furniture, barware, lamps, records and clothing.
Some shops are curated and priced accordingly. Others are closer to a well organised jumble, and those are usually the ones where you find something.
Even if you buy nothing, it’s a good hour of looking at the same design language you’ve been seeing on the streets outside.
More Things To Do In Palm Springs Worth A Day Trip
Some of the best days here start by driving out of town. Joshua Tree National Park is about an hour away and it’s a different desert entirely, all granite piles and twisted trees.
Salvation Mountain and the Salton Sea sit further south and make a strange, memorable afternoon. Idyllwild is a small pine forest town up in the mountains, reachable by a winding road that climbs out of the heat in about an hour.
Closer in, the Cabazon Dinosaurs stand beside the freeway on the way from Los Angeles, and the date farms around Indio will sell you a date shake that’s better than it sounds.
Final Thoughts
Palm Springs rewards a slower trip than most people plan for. The town is small, the drives are short, and the heat sets its own schedule whether you agree with it or not.
Work with that rather than against it. Mornings for canyons and trails, afternoons for museums, gardens and water, evenings for the main street. Do that and a few days here go a long way.
