One Tank Getaways: Palm Springs Restaurant Week. Part 2: Play

Palms Springs, in southern California’s Coachella Valley, is a rich, fertile farming area only a couple of hours’ drive away from Los Angeles. Check out the second part of The Culture Trip’s three-part guide to where to eat, what to do and where to stay in Palm Springs.

Beneath the desert floor is one of the largest aquifers in the world. The region leads the nation for table grapes and date fruit production. Perhaps you don’t know that Palms Springs has a 2500-year-old history and is also home to one of nature’s more eye-catching and potentially catastrophically dangerous geological faults – the San Andreas earthquake fault. There are at least 500 small-scale earthquakes daily in the area. Contrary what you might see in a Hollywood movie, being in that fault canyon might be one of the safest places you could be during a major quake. There are no buildings anywhere around to fall onto you. An up-close view of the San Andreas fault with all of its jagged cliffs, carved winding canyons and upwardly shifting rock and sand is located just a two hour drive east of Los Angeles, the second most populated city in the United States. Most ‘Angelenos’ have certainly heard of the San Andreas fault but have never seen it up close.

Desert Adventures Eco Tours and Events – The Big Red Jeep San Andreas Eco Tour

Seeing part of the San Andreas fault is certainly worth the drive. Along one part of the fault area you can stand with one foot along the North American tectonic plate and the other on the Pacific plate. One of the more exciting ways to see the area is taking a tour with Desert Adventures guide Daryl ‘Blackfeather’ Eisman. In an open-air red jeep, your adventure is almost like an ‘Indiana Jones’ movie. From the start of the trek, you will discover that Daryl is your personal walking encyclopedia of the Sonoran Desert region. As you ride through the winding and extremely narrow canyons of the San Andreas fault you learn about both the indigenous palms trees that thrive from underground streams and the indigenous people – the Cahuilla (Kah-WEE’-ah) Indians. Their descendants are the present-day Agua Caliente nation, the actual landowners of downtown Palm Springs. There is evidence of a once-massive lake that covered Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. If you kick up the dirt around the San Andreas fault, you will still find seashells and ocean shale rock. Remnants of that lake and a levee break around 1900 created what’s now known as the Salton Sea.
Desert Adventures Eco Tours and Events, +1 (880) 440-5337 or +1 (760) 340-2345