At Play in the Coachella Valley

Like beautiful birds, women flock together. Whether on vacation, on shopping expeditions or relaxing at spas, women like to get spend time with their friends, having fun and escaping their busy, often over-scheduled lives. Female golfers, in particular, are indulging in “girls’ golf getaways”.

According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of occasional female golfers–women who play between one and seven times a year–has jumped from 2.6 million in 1997 to 4.3 million. Add to this the Sorenstam/Wie factors, and the popularity of the sport translates into a boom in golf trips.

An editor at Travel Agent magazine, Joe Pike said, “Vacations with girlfriends or female relatives are a significant trend. Women are increasingly taking active vacations together and more luxurious vacations than in years past. Travel agents say these getaways are not merely weekend retreats, rather they are between four and seven days long.” (Click here to read the article in full)

Spring arrives in the Napa Valley on waves of wild golden mustard, two and three feet high, vivid yellow rivers beneath the grapevines blanketing the valley floor. The grapes ripen all summer, and in the fall when the leaves turn red and gold, open bins of harvested grapes are ferried to the wineries for the crush, a busy, celebratory time of the year in the California Wine Country. In the heart of the valley on a quiet country road, anchoring the 1,200-acre grounds of Silverado Resort is a circa-1870, white-pillared, ante-bellum-style mansion reminiscent of a southern plantation, built for a Civil War general on a Spanish land grant. The rambling grounds are shaded by towering eucalyptus, palms, oaks, weeping willows, and magnolias whose creamy white, dinner-plate-sized blooms are seductively fragrant in the summertime http://www.silveradoresort.com.

Massive overhanging trees line the fairways of the two Robert Trent Jones, Jr. layouts, built in the 1960s. Surrounded by vineyards and wooded hills, and watered by ponds, lakes and three creeks, the courses have good bones, having hosted many PGA Tour and PGA Champions Tour events. A new grounds maintenance program and a $4 upgrade has raised course conditions to near-perfect, creating a stiff challenge, especially on the greens. Tees were leveled, bunkers restored and fairways re-sodded, among other improvements. Club member and U.S. Open winner, Johnny Miller, who lives in the neighborhood, said, “(The courses) …are so popular because they are traditional, natural designs, not tricked up with railroad ties and funny bunkers, and the place is run like a gracious, old-style resort.” (Click here to read the article in full)

In 1887, twenty-five dollars bought a round-trip ticket on an excursion train from San Francisco to Palm Springs, “the only spot in California where frost, fog and windstorms are absolutely unknown,” according to a real estate advertisement of the day. Mule-drawn buckboards carried passengers from the train station to the Palm Springs Hotel, where they played bridge and drank beer under the palms, soaked in hot mineral pools inside a rickety wooden bathhouse, and picnicked in the Indian Canyons.

In the glamorous Hollywood heyday of the 1920s and 1930s, Errol Flynn, Ginger Rogers and their movie star cohorts routinely made the 100-mile trek over the mountains to Palm Springs in unairconditioned cars to relax at the tiny, Spanish-style La Quinta Hotel. They basked in dry, warm air and played on the nine-hole golf course, the first in the valley, for the green fee of a dollar. (Click here to read the article in full)