In Palm Heaven

Aerial of the Vintage Club in Palm Desert

Golf paradise in California desert

From Palm Springs to Rancho Mirage to Palm Desert to Indian Wells to La Quinta, it’s one long stretch of gorgeous golf environments populated with a million palm trees. Then, of course, you have the car dealerships that crowd Hwy 111 that include all the high-end marks from Mercedes to Aston Martin to Rolls Royce to Ferrari. Sprinkle in a generous number of Starbucks and grocery stores along the corridor and you can find anything you could possibly need and dozens of things you don’t need.

The whole string of little cities is heavenly, if you like palm trees, that is. They symbolize paradise and serenity. Plus, they are always green. There’s an amazing variety of species but the super tall ones with a crown of vibrant green fronds evoke a luxurious atmosphere to me.

I always laugh when people say, “Oh, you’re going to The Desert?” Well, I live in the desert in Scottsdale, so, yes, I’m going from the desert to THE desert.

Palms of the Coachella Valley

However, there is much more lush green grass here since the Coachella Valley can draw water from a massive underground aquifer. The early developers tuned into the appeal of a ribbon of lawn-like golf holes threaded through a real estate community to produce a winning formula.

Like the iconic Magnolia Lane of Augusta, magnificent palm trees lining an entrance signifies you are someplace special. Even the shopping mall builders have adopted this visual language because they know how enticing it is.

Coachella Valley palms

The stars at The Vintage Club

The temperatures are just right for outdoor dining and music at night.

The stars at The Vintage Club were mesmerizing along with extraordinary wine and food. I asked our hosts what are those two extremely bright stars…is one of them Venus? “No, they are probably satellites.” Oh. That’s amazing. I had no idea those bright points of light could be visible while we were dining al fresco.

The dry desert air was crisp and cool but several moveable heaters circled our table and directed enough warmth to make drinking an extraordinary red wine go down that much smoother.

Besides visiting with old friends who we haven’t seen in over eight years, how would I know I was in California? How about experiencing my first earthquake!

We were having dinner with a lovely couple at Ruth’s Chris and just as I felt the tremor in my feet, the water glasses on the table started shaking. Our friends as well as everyone else in the sumptuous dining room did not miss a beat. Ho hum. Just a regular thing like a sunrise or a sunset.

Golfing for every challenge level

Golf with our host as PGA West Citrus Course was fun but the Pete Dye course was a bit too challenging for me. The legendary architect certainly got the beauty factor just right on this most choice piece of land he was given to work with.

No great scores but I finished with the same two balls I started with…keeping them dry the whole round. Playing the Palm Valley Country Club with our next host allowed me another rare opportunity to chase those same two little white balls around, find some pars on the friendlier Ted Robinson course. 

PGA West Citrus Course, La Quinta 

Spending a couple of hours at the American Express tournament and catching up with Séamus Power on the 17th was really fun. Kevin had played with him when the title sponsor was Career Builder and Séamus was an unknown Irish golfer on the PGA Tour. 

The American Express PGA Tour event has had many title sponsors over the years, however it started as the Bob Hope Classic and many of us still refer to it as the ‘Hope’.

Starting in 1960, Arnold Palmer won the Bob Hope Classic five times and he is the only 5-time winner of the event. Palmer’s last victory was in 1973. It’s no wonder Arnie made the Tradition Golf Club in La Quinta his winter home, having designed the course in 1996.

Finding time for art

Kevin and I had just enough time to swing by Heather James Fine Art on Portola Avenue in Palm Desert before we headed back over to Avenue 52. While it is a gallery where everything is for sale, it feels more like a museum. The Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910) Girl Standing in the Wheat Field painted in 1873 spoke to me.

This summation from the Heather James website describes the glowing light and serene setting:

Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the
Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly
relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and
another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer
would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a
costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral
painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in
the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes
and wheat spike touches.

Dining at Arnold Palmer restaurant

Add in dinner at Arnold Palmer restaurant and we capped off another perfect day in paradise. The main dining room has been significantly remodeled since the photo of it featured in the profile of Arnold Palmer from the Professional Golfers With Their Own Wine Label, is represented in Terroir of Golf.

Kevin’s final round of golf was back at the Citrus Course for a member-guest tournament. Breakfast-golf-lunch with more superb sunshine concluded a fabulous week.

It gave me a chance to take a long walk around a beautiful residential neighborhood. I spotted a couple of trails going through desert toward the mountains to the west but I stuck to the sidewalks where I could see thriving bougainvillea and other flowering plants with birdsong all around me.

Yep. Heaven for me.

Arnold Palmer restaurant – private dining room with framed Green Jacket