Ragnar Recovery Time: Palm Springs, Part 1

Hey there everybody!  When last I blogged, our team, Breaking Rag, finally finished the Ragnar Los Coyotes trail running event.  After lots of hugs and well wishes, our team disbanded; Jake and Matt drove home to Phoenix, the Spencer crew headed to the beaches near San Diego for some family time, and Chris and I started north for a few days in Palm Springs.  As I mentioned in the Thursday night Ragnar blog, the Monday after the event was Chris' birthday, so we figured a few days in Palm Springs was the right mix of rest and recovery after a hard physical event plus celebration of his yearly trip around the sun.

We drove into Palm Springs from Warner Springs directly after the race, arriving around 7pm or so at our lodging for the next few nights, the Los Arboles Hotel.  In addition to being in a good location and having a decent price, one of the hotel's selling points for us was the on site Mexican restaurant, which also offered room service.  I figured if we were feeling feisty after the epic showers we'd take upon arrival from Ragnar, we could limp to the courtyard and sit down to eat, but more likely, we could take advantage of the ability to eat tacos whilst in our pj's in bed.  As it turned out, after checking in and scraping three days' worth of trail dust off ourselves, we weren't in any condition to go out and party, so we had some food delivered, ate it, and immediately passed out in bed.

The next morning, we were awake early.  This was partly due to going to bed early the night before and sleeping soundly for a good 9-10 hours; however, it was also partly due to our next-door neighbor, who was having a rather loud speakerphone call with someone whom he threatened with "taking away those kids!"  Regardless, by 7am, we were out the door and checking out the town, heading for caffeine.

We made our first stop a place called Koffi, a local coffeehouse I'd read about.  It was great!

Happily using the Koffi wifi

while enjoying the lovely morning.

In addition to good coffee and chai, we enjoyed some of their freshly baked goods and bagel breakfast sandwiches.  We relaxed in their courtyard area for a bit, mainly enjoying the peace and quiet and lack of any sort of physical activity that would be required to occur that day.

Me and the Don,

just whacking away at our personal windmills.

The view of the courtyard.

I think they were re-sodding here,

hence the tape.

It wasn't a crime scene, I promise.

Eventually, we wandered back to our hotel for a quick soak in the hot tub, which felt lovely after the past few days.  We chatted with another hotel guest, an extremely talkative Vancouver-ite, and it was back to the room to clean up and start the rest of our day.  

A few shots of the hotel...

It really was a lovely place - 

noisy neighbors aside,

it was so calm and peaceful.

We'd recommend it.

Before we headed out again, Chris inquired at the front desk about the potential to be moved, and they were happy to help us.  As it turns out, they had a suite available, and given the issue with our neighbor (and the street noise in the first room - that was loud, too, as we found out later in the day), they were happy to relocate us.  Truly, these folks were great!

After relocating, we headed out to the Palm Springs Air Museum.  Chris grew up in a family of military aviators, and mine has some too; I remember touring countless museums full of planes and submarines and battleships when I was a kiddo, and we both still enjoy sites like this now.  Logically, the air museum is located right next to the airport, and it has tons of fun planes and interesting exhibits to check out.  According to one of the docents, it's often rated as one of the best air museums in the country, as you can walk right up to almost every plane on site, and you can even crawl through many of them.  We took full advantage of that, as you'll see.

The views from the museum are also gorgeous.

Chris showing the enlisted bunks in one of the models on site.

There were at least 6-7 of these models,

and the detail on them was incredible.

The day before we visited, the museum celebrated an important milestone (20 years, maybe?), and one of the highlights was to buy a ride in an actual bomber plane from WWII.  While I checked it out for Chris' birthday, the price tag was a bit too steep ($400 for 20 minutes.  Yup, really); however, some hardy souls with deeper pockets than ours did pony up the cash, and we enjoyed watching the bomber take off and cruise around the airfield.

Taxiing down the runway

Just after takeoff

Flying back over the air museum

As I mentioned earlier, there were several planes and vehicles you could climb in and check out.  While this was harder than normal due to our muscle fatigue from Ragnar, we still took advantage of this opportunity.

Ready to eject!

"Stewardess, a gin and tonic, please."

Chris: "They didn't have stewardesses on these planes, honey."

Lotsa dials and gauges

We had a great time at the air museum, and we'd highly recommend it, if you're into that sort of thing.  After the museum, we headed back to the hotel, as it was a convenient place to park and walk to our lunch destination, Trio.  Chris was driving at this point, and his backup camera was quickly rendered useless by the lush vegetation in the hotel parking lot.

Sorry for the crappy quality here,

but it was really funny at the time.

Lunch at Trio was great - fresh, good food prepared perfectly and reasonably priced (by Palm Springs standards).  It was back to our room to fill up our water bottles, and then it was on to our next location - the Coachella Valley Brewing Company in nearby Thousand Palms.  After a 15 minute drive, we found the brewery and set ourselves up with a sample of their great brews.

Noms in various shades of brown

While we felt we found some clear winners and some clear not-so-winners, most of their offerings were quite good, and they had tons of really neat creations we hadn't seen before in other locations.  The bartender was also great, and we had fun singing along to the "best of the 90s-00s" radio station playing in the background (until we realized that the fancy mattress ads being touted by the radio station were now officially targeted at...us.  Gulp.  We're old now).  We snagged some swag for the beer fridge and some bottles of other things to bring back home.  Another highly recommend!

On the way back to the hotel, we made a quick stop at Great Shakes, a noted milkshake/malt store in downtown Palm Springs.  Their list of offerings is HUGE, but Chris ended up with something caramel in nature, and I had a mint OREO concoction.  While we waited for our shakes, we perused the candy history chart, discovering that three amazing things came to life in 1979: 

Twix, Skittles, and ME!

Our small shakes.

Yes, those are teeny tiny donuts

on the straws.

Having now fully erased any lingering post-Ragnar calorie deficit, we headed back to the hotel for a nap.  After restoring ourselves, we got all fancied up and headed to Chris' birthday dinner at Copley's, a nearby Palm Springs institution.  Apparently, the house on site at Copley's used to be owned by Cary Grant, and he'd use the small apartments inside to house visitors from the movie studio.  According to our waiter, Palm Springs became hugely popular in the 40s and 50s as movie stars couldn't be further than three hours away from the studio at certain times, so Palm Springs was as far as they could get from Hollywood and still meet that requirement.  I didn't take any shots, but here's their gorgeous patio, where we sat:

So pretty!
Thanks, internets!

It was a lovely night, and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal - an appetizer of pork belly, mains of duck and chicken, and a creme brulee for dessert.  After dinner, we headed back to Trio, as they had a great selection of after dinner drinks, and then it was back home to the Los Arboles and to bed.  Although we'd slept well the night before and napped, too, one day wasn't enough to completely rest up from something like Ragnar.  We turned in before it was too late, ready for our second day in the area.

Later!

Amy