MacGougan at Large

Notes on a Trip to Palm Springs - 1

Why Palm Springs?

The starting point for us is that we live in Connecticut but have a son, daughter-in-law, and five year-old grandson who live in Oregon. Who - you might ask - would build a life a whole continent away from their childhood home? Actually, we did. Linda and I both grew up in the Pacific Northwest, then came east to college and ended up settling in New England. What goes around comes around.

Our current pattern is to see our Oregon crew at least twice a year. We can usually get them to make a trip east sometime in the summer and we head west sometime in the winter.

Oregon is a beautiful state, but can be a little dreary in the winter. Last year, they suggested meeting up in Hawaii. We had a great time, and notes from that trip launched MacGougan at Large.

We wanted a similar experience this year, with maybe a little less flying time. So we were in the market for a vacation spot that would be warm and easily accessible from Oregon or Connecticut. Palm Springs, California fit the bill.

The Oregon contingent could get there on a two-and-a-half hour direct flight from Portland. We got there with one stop from Hartford - taking off at a civilized 10 am and arriving at a plenty-of-day-left 3:30 pm. Another son who lives in New York joined us and was able to get a direct flight from JFK.

Palm Springs weather isn’t guaranteed to be warm and sunny in February, but your odds are a lot better there than either Oregon or Connecticut. We had cool and windy weather for our first few days - the aftermath of a storm that had passed through. After that, the wind went away and the temperatures climbed back up to the 70s and 80s.

Palm Springs hadn’t been on my radar before the trip. Our daughter-in-law suggested it based on memories of childhood trips. I had thought of it simply as a place where, back in the day, Hollywood celebrities would play golf and then lounge by their pools and drink.

(These people are waiting to tour the house where Frank Sinatra lived. The pool, incidentally, is shaped like a piano.)

We looked into it and became interested in the area - particularly the architecture. Palm Springs is the birthplace and Mecca of a type of modernism that shaped what’s known today as midcentury modern design. This is an aesthetic that has always appealed to us, and Palm Springs provides the opportunity to see a lot of it - and even live in it.

Join us for this series as we explore the area and take a turn as would-be Hollywood celebrities.

In a day and age when many places seem generic, I found Palm Springs to be refreshingly its own place. There’s a there there.