The Coachella Valley Vista Point a few miles up Route 74 — a sweeping pull-off looking back down over the whole desert valley, Palm Springs, and on the clearest days a glint of the Salton Sea.
You've been climbing hard for a few miles now, and up here on your right is the Coachella Valley Vista Point — pull off if you can, because the view back down is tremendous, and it's the best look you'll get at where you started. Behind and below you, the whole Coachella Valley spreads out flat and pale and enormous: Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs strung along the foot of the mountains, the green squares of golf courses and date groves, the grid of streets shrinking to a toy town. On a clear day you can follow the valley all the way southeast to a low silver gleam on the horizon — that's the Salton Sea, California's biggest lake, sitting well below sea level out in the desert.
Notice how far you've come already. Down there it's desert floor; up here you're several thousand feet up, the air's cooler, and the plants have started to change — bigger shrubs, the first scrubby little trees. You're climbing one of the steepest mountain faces in the country, and you can feel the road working for it. This pull-off is also just a fine place to let your engine cool and your ears pop. Take the view, then roll on up — it only gets higher and greener from here.
Photo: APK · CC BY-SA 4.0
