More Cochella Valley stuff

We found Cabot’s Pueblo Museum in Desert Hot Springs. Cabot Yerza was an interesting fellow. He was owned a multistory grocery store on 5^th and Nicollet in Minneapolis. He figured out how to make big money providing stuff to the prospectors on the Gold Rush in Nome Alaska. He was a tank commander under Eisenhower in WW2. In the late 1800’s he homesteaded land, built what became an immense pueblo, and dug a well that resulted in the discovery of the mineral waters under Desert Hot Springs California.

We toured his pueblo thoroughly enjoying all the intricate details, as well as many of the period artifacts inside. Outside we scored another of the Peter Wolf Toth Whispering Giants. Allegedly Toth carved this Giant while here touring Cabot’s pueblo museum on his honeymoon. Pretty cool if that is really true.

Yerza was known as one of the earliest homesteaders in the area, and was successful in getting title to more than one claim by improving the land and occupying it for 3 years straight. He was extremely connected with the Cahuilla, the indigenous natives to this land, and his home was essentially a tribute to them, even though it looked more Pueblo or Hopi in design. But he was especially known for discovering the first hot spring while drilling his well on the San Andreas Fault. Desert Hot Springs resulted, and all the rich LA folk swarmed here to soak in the healing mineral waters. We decided to pretend we were Dean Martin.

To continue on our exploration of Cabot Yerza, we headed into Cathedral City to Desert Memorial Cemetery where he had been allegedly had been buried in March of 1965. Our mission was accomplished when we spotted his grave stone.

However, our experience didn’t end just there. Just down the row from Cabot Yerza was the grave stone of Magda Gabor, sister to both Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor. There was nothing drawing your attention to these sites – they were very understated. However, we were stunned when we stumbled over the gravesite of Frank Sinatra and his 4^th wife, Barbara.

Since we had found a few really famous entertainers, we decided to walk around a bit. And low and behold, we stumbled another stone we didn’t expect to see. We found the grave of the mom of Sonny Bono of Sonny and Cher fame. But we also found the gravesite of Sonny Bono. What an interesting discovery for us!

As long as we had some time, we looked around the Coachella Valley to see what real estate prices might be like. What we found was that we could probably get a home in the size range we were interested in located in a resort community – meaning clubhouse, fitness center, activities, restaurant and bar – for around $350,000, which seemed really reasonable to us. What didn’t seem so reasonable was the gated motorhome community where you buy a pad for your RV with hookups, and have an 800 square foot casita with a nice deck – felt really compelling, but they were going for $350,000 as well!

The city of Palm Springs holds a street festival every Thursday evening. They close off about 6 blocks of Palm Canyon Drive, the main shopping and entertainment street in downtown Palm Springs, and let street vendors set up kiosks to sell crafts, food, produce, clothing and whatever. On the advice of the Woman’s cousin Craig, we made sure to hit the Palm Springs Street Fair before we moved on. 

We decided to take a day and drive through Joshua Tree National Park. While we have been there a couple times before, you should never be this close to one of the better National Parks with a Senior Pass burning a hole in your pocket and not pay a visit. Besides, several of our co-explorers down in the Baja said the place was exploding with blooms of all kinds, and they were right!

Wrapping up our visit we explored the weekend farmers market in Palm Desert, where you can buy anything from fresh vegetables to cars and furniture. While a couple weeks too early, we headed over to the Empire Polo Grounds. While today there were only folk out their exercising their polo ponies and practicing their expertise with their polo mallets. However, there were already signs of the impending quarter of a million young’uns who will soon descend on the Polo Grounds for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Dang, just missed it!

We stayed at Emerald Desert RV Resort while we were here. At their entrance they have a bubbling water feature – not exactly a fountain, just a small pool with 3 bubbling features. Well, to celebrate Saint Patties Day, you can see what happened to the water feature.

Talk to you soon.