The road was getting interesting, the mountains rose ahead above the parched earth and scrub of the desert. A hoarding advertising a casino proclaimed

‘We want you to win’ and I wondered if the Indians who owned it were speaking with honeyed tongues.

We drove on, it got hotter and in the middle of the desert an incongruous oasis appeared, a roadside casino with a giant water fall before it. The road snaked along the floor of the canyon running, for a time, beside the railway and we overtook a long goods train hauled by a locomotive blasting a baleful wail on it’s siren, then we eased our speed as we passed the highway patrol writing out a ticket.

We left the desert tumble weed behind and passed the Palm Springs city limit. It was warm and dry, hardly surprising in a place where they experience three hundred and fifty days a year without rain. Fortunately there’s water enough under the valley floor to keep the championship golf courses lush and feed the thirty thousand swimming pools,

Palm Springs is a town built by celebrities for celebrities, we drove down

Frank Sinatra Drive and turned into and Bob Hope Boulevard. If you want more detail you can tackle one of the ‘celebrity tours.’ It costs £11 for a drive past thirty to forty homes including one once used by Liberace. It’s easily recognised by the candelabra style porch lamp. The present occupant had a Rolls Royce parked in front, but in Palm Springs that’s no big deal, large cars white limousine and jaguars seem to be everywhere.

For an overview of this well heeled community I took to the hills in an aerial tramway The red cabin in which we swung up towards the mountain station 8500 ft high in the snows reminded me of a scene from ‘Where Eagles Dare’. In fourteen minutes we travelled through five climatic zones. It was the equivalent of going from Mexico to the Mountains of Alaska. By the time we got a third of the way up my ears were beginning to pop and as we climbed higher we could see how the green of the golf courses below stood out in sharp contrast with the brown dry desert. We stepped out at the top station to find, paths that led through the pine trees to miles of cross country ski and snow shoe trails.

Come the summer there is more than 54 miles of hiking trails.

It was quite a contrast from life ‘downtown’ where you notice that most of the inhabitants seem to have grey hair. Palm Springs is jokingly referred to as ‘God’s waiting room.’ One of the big attractions is a show called the

Palm Springs Follies and I must confess I went in expecting to see high stepping, long legged showgirls. in sparkling costumes. Well I did see all of those but what came as a surprise was the fact that they and the rest of the cast were all over fifty, but you would have to be pretty close to the first row to notice. They all put up a wonderful performance including a 64 year old former stripper of some fame and 84 year old who used to be a  'high kicker'  on Broadway. The show which starred Howard Keel, went down well with an audience who came out into the night, full of enthusiasm. The nights can be special and come the evening the place is transformed, with many of the tall palm trees beside the illuminated blue swimming pools traced out in fairy lights. I found some visitors from Scotland who agreed that there was something rather pleasant about lying in an outdoor hot tub in the month of February and looking up at the stars

The next day, we boarded a bright red jeep driven by a lady guide with a colourful name "Morgan - Wind in her Hair" 

She is part Indian, which for some is a good thing, thanks to land settlements, most of the casinos are now owned by Indians and many are millionaires. Morgan earns an honest buck by running the Desert Adventure Tours through the kind of terrain you find in a ‘John Wayne’ movie. Bouncing over the tracks on the way up into the Santa Rosa Mountains we took in the wonders of the wilderness and enjoyed tales of Indian customs. (A two hour tour costs £45 and it’s £63 for a half day)

Most visitors come to Palm Springs in the winter, for in the summer the temperature can soar to 120 F mark, (hot enough to fry eggs on the roof of your car.) If you can cope with the heat there are bargains to be had as room rates then drop by 50 or 30% and the hotel owners spend a small fortune on electricity for the air conditioning.

For me the abiding memory of my visit was gazing into the eyes of a mountain lion. No not in my wanderings on the mountain trails but at The Living Desert. It’s a sweet smelling 1,200 acre wildlife park in the Coachella Valley where you roam through plants from the major desert regions of the world. He was a truly beautiful creature I would have stroked him - but he was behind glass.

Palm Springs information Tel : 0171 978 5233

Flights to Los Angeles with Virgin Atlantic 01293 747 747