Air Museum and Downtown Palm Springs

Thursday, January 9
We've been reading up on what to see in the downtown of Palm Springs and we found a few things that piqued our interest.

They have an Air Museum near the airport. We heard it was good and I do like those places. So we went there. Cheryl isn't a big fan so she stayed in the truck in the shade and made phone calls to family and friends. Lots of inbound and outbound flights so she was entertained by them as well.

The Air Museum is definitely a good one. Lots of guys around to ask questions. Mostly Vietnam vets that actually flew or worked on some of the planes on display. When they find out you are from Canada they hand you an additional brochure they say is 'translated for Canadians'. I thought that was funny and they must have added a few 'eh's' into the write ups for us. What they actually meant was that they added lots of information on the Canadianized version of the planes they have on display. Canada named the planes by different names than the US. For example the C-47 Skytrain was called a Dakota in Canada. Very nice of the Museum to do this. It made the museum much more interesting to Canadians.

The C-47 Skytrain or as we know it in Canada, the Dakota. You could book a ride for $99/person.

A Westjet 737 taking off.

F-14A Tomcat

F-104 Starfighter

This was a very unique display. It had the pictures of POW's from the Vietnam War.

The display cases had real POW bracelets. 

A colorful Huey.

P-40 Warhawk

F4U Corsair

B-25 Mitchel

Supermarine Spitfire

A unique piece. Combo motorcycle and mini-tank.

The B-17 had its own hangar. She was shiny!

That's the P-51 Mustang hiding in the service hangar. You could get a ride in her for $1895 USD. Too bad she was in the hangar or I might have been tempted. Ya, right.

Just an old Learjet? This is N464CL, no ordinary jet plane. She has over 18,000 flight hours on her.

The little Lear is a movie and TV star

A very interesting history of the little Lear owned by Clay Lacy

Next stop was to do some house gawking. Lots of Hollywood stars had homes in the hills around Palm Springs. We did some research and drove past a few of them. The original owners are long gone so we didn't expect to run into Bing Crosby or Dean Martin. In fact you really can't tell much about the homes from the street. If you look at satellite view on Google Maps you can get a better sense of what is behind the hedges.

Hard to see much behind these hedges

Bougainvillea hedges everywhere. 

Debbie Reynolds house

Elvis Presley honeymoon house.

Jack Benny's house

Clark Gable lived here

This was Dean Martin's pad

We headed into the downtown and found a good place to park. There is unlimited free parking in the downtown. Isn't that great? More cities should take note.

They have a Star Walk downtown so we walked a few blocks and checked out the big names.

Sonny Bono statue

Sonny was popular with the ladies!

Cheryl having a chat with Lucille Ball.

Over 300 stars around town.

We found a shop with interesting clocks.

All clocks.

Beautiful lamps here.

We stopped for a great Margarita here.

I was speaking to my RV neighbor and he mentioned a great place to eat, Bill's Pizza. We like pizza so given it was only a couple hundred yards from the parking lot, we went. Turns out they had some water plumbing issues and were closed, but were opening at 5 PM. The nice lady let us in about 15 minutes early and we had a drink until they officially opened. Good thing we got there early because they were lined up out the door by the time we left. yes, the pizza was VERY good. One of the best we have ever had.

Thursday nights in downtown Palm Springs they close off the main street and hold their Village Fest. It's one big market with vendors selling candy, clothing, jewelry, artwork and other assorted goods. Many of the businesses on the street stay open extended hours as well. They start setting up around 5:30 and close up around 9 PM. We walked the three blocks or so and managed to keep our hands in our pockets. We found the prices a bit high, but hey, it's Palm Springs after all.

......and that was Our View From Here!