April Weekend Down in the Palm Springs Area

An April weekend down in the desert. Started in Palm Springs, where the walk along Palm Canyon Dr turned up the old Robinson's Department Store at number 333 — built in 1958, a William Pereira design, a Modernist pavilion with diamonds along the flat roofline and those shadow-block walls. It originally had anodized-gold posts and big glamorous window displays; now it's a BevMo!. Selling discount wine out of a Pereira building seems like a demotion, but at least the roofline survived.

Over in Rancho Mirage the sky went gray and heavy in the afternoon, clouds sitting right down on the mountains behind the golf course. The fountain kept going in the pond by the clubhouse whether anyone was watching or not.

By the time we got to the Hyatt Regency the palms along the drive were all wrapped in lights, the whole entrance glowing under a sky that never really cleared. The date palms out front are enormous — a completely different animal from the skinny fan palms downtown. Still deciding which desert I prefer, the scrubby mountain kind or the manicured resort kind.