You came a long way for one Saturday. Here is everything worth doing with the rest of the weekend, sorted by how far you have to drive from the Sands.
Six things we would hate for you to miss. Tap one for the full story below.
Swipe for more, the whole valley is below
The gold star is the Sands, the pink stars are our top picks, and the plane is the airport. Tap a pin for details and directions.
Distances are real drive times, not straight lines. The desert is bigger than it looks.
The valley is wall to wall with public courses and courts, several of them minutes from the Sands, and February is the best playing weather of the whole year. Bring clubs or a racquet if you have strong feelings, rentals are everywhere if you do not.
The whole property is ours for the weekend. Poolside coffee in the morning, mint tea on arrival, and a spa worth booking before you land rather than after.
A mile of boutiques, galleries and sidewalk restaurants locals call the Rodeo Drive of the desert. Closer to you than anything in Palm Springs, and the best lunch in the valley is along it.
A zoo and botanical garden built around desert species from around the world. Giraffe feedings, a rhino habitat, and gardens that finally explain what you have been looking at since you landed.
The Coachella Valley grows most of the country's dates, and the date shake is the thing you will be teased for not trying. Shields has done it since 1924, gardens and a bafflingly earnest film about date romance included.
The Cove trails run straight up into the Santa Rosas from a residential street. Bear Creek and Cove to Lake are the easy wins. Go early, take more water than feels reasonable.
The Annenberg estate on Bob Hope Drive. Two hundred acres of midcentury architecture where Walter and Leonore Annenberg hosted presidents, British royalty and half of Hollywood for forty years. Nine acres of desert gardens are free to walk. The house itself needs a timed ticket and they sell out.
Table games, poker, a proper sportsbook and a steakhouse, twenty minutes from your pillow. A second location sits in downtown Palm Springs, and Fantasy Springs in Indio is about the same distance the other way.
The largest rotating tram car in the world climbs two and a half miles up Chino Canyon in ten minutes, desert floor to alpine forest at 8,516 feet. The floor turns under you the whole way so everyone gets the view.
The north end of Palm Canyon Drive, and the best few blocks in the city. Vintage furniture, design shops, coffee, and the midcentury architecture the town is famous for, all walkable.
A self-guided loop past the houses that made Palm Springs famous: Frank Sinatra's Twin Palms on Alejo, the Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway on Ladera Circle, the Dinah Shore house, the Kaufmann Desert House and Frey House II. About an hour of slow driving with the windows down, and it costs nothing.
Josh Agle's gallery and shop. If you have ever seen a cocktail-hour illustration of midcentury Palm Springs, it was probably his. The best souvenir in town that is not a keychain.
The flagship boutique on Palm Canyon, in a building Albert Frey designed. Resort wear that looks like the desert rather than a costume version of it.
Modern and contemporary art, a serious glass collection, and a building worth the ticket on its own. A good call if the wind picks up and the tram shuts down.
Palm, Andreas and Murray Canyons on Agua Caliente tribal land. Real fan palm oases with water running through them, which is not what anyone expects the desert to look like. Palm Canyon is the easy one, Andreas the prettiest.
Palm Canyon Drive shuts to traffic every Thursday evening for a street fair. Makers, produce, food stalls, live music. If you fly in Wednesday or Thursday this is the easiest possible first night out.
A family-run acre of cacti with the world's first cactarium in a greenhouse out back. Takes forty minutes, costs almost nothing, and is the most photographed small garden in the valley for a reason.
Balloons lift at first light from the east valley, the side you are already staying on. An hour over date groves and the Santa Rosas with the mountains going pink, then champagne on landing because that is the tradition and nobody argues with it.
Open-air jeeps run out to slot canyons and palm oases sitting directly on the fault line, on land you cannot otherwise reach.
An hour and a bit north and a completely different landscape: boulder piles, joshua trees, and a night sky that is genuinely startling. Hidden Valley is the Pendletons' favorite, a flat mile through a rock enclosure cattle rustlers once used as a natural corral.
A white wooden dome built in 1954 by an aeronautical engineer who said aliens gave him the plans for a rejuvenation machine. You lie on the floor while quartz bowls are played and the acoustics do something difficult to describe and easy to recommend.
Built in 1946 as a live-in Western film set, and Mane Street still looks like 1880 because it was built to. At the end of it sits Pappy & Harriet's, a roadhouse that became one of the most famous small venues in America. Paul McCartney played here. So did half of everyone else. Barbecue, a patio, and a booking calendar worth checking against your dates.
Cabazon, on the way back toward Los Angeles. One of the largest outlet centres in the country, and the reason a few of you will need a second suitcase.
Everything on this page will still be there the rest of the week. The ceremony is at four thirty on Saturday the sixth, and we would love everyone there for it.