Image via Complex Original
Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival is considered one of the most iconic music festivals in the world. Ladies in cut-off shorts, bikini tops, and flower crowns flounce around posting photos to Instagram, while bros bounce along to their favorite bass-shaking EDM. Everyone looks like they are rolling, and if they're not rolling, they probably work in the "industry" and get to eat sushi from Sugarfish in the VIP area. Coachella offers amazing music, cotton-candy hued sunsets, palm trees, and a beautiful desert landscape, but there's more to that gorgeous landscape than you think. It's not just a backdrop. There are many cool things to do in Indio that don't involve Coachella. If you're not feeling the festival one day, or are in the area but not a festival-goer, you should definitely hit up one of these cool spots.
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Salton Sea
Pros: Creepy setting
Cons: Scary Slab City citizens
Attracts: Weirdos and freaks
Website: parks.ca.gov
Imagine driving across an expanse of land that looks like the end of the world. A crimson sunset reflects violently across a salt-water lake that used to be home to some sort of twisted ‘50s resort community that must have feasted on one of the only fishes that can survive in the super saline water: Tilapia. Spookily surrounded by masses of birds, including dreamy white pelicans, the Salton Sea is simultaneously something out of a meth-action film and a Salvador Dali painting.
Of course, such an odd environment attracts weirdoes and kooks, some of whom John Waters made a film about called Plagues & Pleasures of the Salton Sea. Near the Salton Sea is Slab City, a city with no laws and governance and just a bunch of off-the-gridders and Salton Salvation Mountain, a desert-folk outdoor art installation that is essentially a hill made of adobe, straw, and graffiti-paint by a super religious man named Leonard Knight. After too much acid and too many sunsets, you might get drawn into this ephemeral world made by nature and perpetuated by man, so watch out.
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
Pros: Insane views, perfect scenery
Cons: The price
Attracts: Tourists
Website: pstramway.com
What better way to take a break from the horrible EDM at Coachella than to ride the world’s largest, scariest rotating tramway? Your car goes 8,516 feet above the desert floor, through the Chino Canyon cliffs, and into the San Jacinto Mountains. For a $25 dollar ticket you can take a 10-minute ride that transports you from the dry, arid heat of Palm Springs to the infinitely cooler pine-topped mountains. Your tram rotates at 360 degrees so that you get to take in every facet off the world floating around you. You can partake in a cocktail or three at the restaurant at the top of the mountains and watch a film about the local history in the theater. Once you're sober enough, hike down the mountain, take a nap somewhere and the head back to the festival.
Indian Canyons
Pros: Gorgeous landscapes, rich cultural history, vigorous hikes
Cons: $9 parking fee
Attracts: Naturalists
Website: indian-canyons.com
Before there were Classic Hollywood starlets draped across pastel pools and fabulous, flamboyant men walking their dogs down palm tree-lined streets, Palm Springs and the surrounding Indian canyons were home to the Aqua Caliente Cahuilla Native Americans. They made their homes across the Palm, Murray, Andreas, Tahquitz, and Chino Canyons and the remnants of their fertile lives exists in things like scattered house pits, watering systems, and rock art. Miles of canyons boasts rocky gorges for those that would like to get their epic life experiences from bouldering, gorgeous waterfalls, and streams that rival any hipster pool party. The $9 entrance fee to park is probably cheaper than a beer at the festival.
Noah Purifoy's Outdoor Museum
Pros: Amazing original art, found objects, beauty in trash
Cons: By appointment only
Attracts: Eccentric art lovers
Website: noahpurifoy.com
Coachella isn’t just about the music. There are a lot of amazing artists that scatter pieces of their imagination all over the grounds. But Noah Purifoy’s outdoor museum in Joshua Tree is a permanent symbol of this simple Southern man’s dream to maintain art in a place devoid of established culture but teaming with subtle beauty: the desert. Purifoy spent the last fifteen years of his life creating a giant found-goods sculpture across 710 acres of desert. It includes a theater, “gallows”, and is architecturally reminiscent of the house from Beetlejuice. Purifoy’s alien-esque exotic desert dystopia is now maintained by a foundation. Entry is donation based and by appointment only.
The Spring
Pros: Healing mineral baths, the day spa
Cons: The price
Attracts: Yuppies looking for peace of mind
Website: the-spring.com
Feel like your limbs are going to fall off after dancing for three days straight? Take advantage of the natural desert hot springs that surround the area with their healing mineral waters. There are plenty of places to dip-and-sip (sitting in salty little pools of water while licking the brim of your Bloody Mary), but The Spring is one of the most chill and accessible. For different prices you can utilize the springs at the boutique hotel, resort, and spa.
The Desert Hot Springs water is rich in silica, which is a good lubricant for the skin. When you soggy up your sore body, you’re just absorbing all the curative minerals mother nature can give you at the spirit-scalding temperature of 170 degrees. Considering water itself is a hot commodity at Coachella during three mirage-inducing days, it's a dream to soak up the core of the earth through plentiful waters rather than soak up too much sun.
Cabazon Dinosaurs
Pros: Cute, quirky, retro, Amerciana
Cons: Not alive
Attracts: Families and pre-Coachella selfies
Website: cabazondinosaurs.com
Remember that show Dinosaurs from the ‘90s that featured Baby Sinclair who was like the Jurassic-version of Stewie from Family Guy? The Cabazon dinosaurs are literally nothing like that other than the fact that they are also dinosaurs and elicit childhood fantasies of owning a dinosaur or nightmares of the velociraptor from Jurassic Park.
There are amazing sculptures perched at the edge of the road in Cabazon, these photogenic dinos were created by Knott’s Berry Farm sculptor Claude Bell in the ‘60s. Since then, ravers and rockers on their way to Coachella have posed with the 100-ton Tyrannosaurus Rex. There’s also a weird Creationist museum (apparently dinosaurs were created the same time as Adam and Eve), a gift shop, and a 60-room motel with delightful views of the steel and concrete dinosaurs and what feels like the world’s longest freeway: the I-10.
San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm
Pros: Sustainable wind energy
Cons: Totally distracting while driving
Attracts: Everyone on the freeway
Website: energy.ca.gov
Crude bodily jokes aside, the wind farm is a remarkable thing to see while driving to Coachella and sort of an emotional marker that your journey into music and molly, rock and rolling is about to begin. Considered one of the windiest places in Southern California (so windy I once saw a big rig flip), the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm creates sustainable energy via wind and hundreds of wind turbines that look like white birds nodding their heads against the dry desert gusts. You and your crew should book a tour to get up-close-and-personal with the stars of our sustainable future.
Pappy and Harriet's
Pros: Awesome shows, delicious diner food, coolest Cowboy hotel
Cons: Horror movie style road
Attracts: Hipsters, truckers, and cougars
Website: pappyandharriets.com
It was once a common movie set for westerns in the ‘40s and ‘50s, but Pioneertown’s greatest attraction is Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace. The restaurant and music venue is set up like an Old West-style cowboy saloon and offers all the All-American fixings and brews your hardened arteries could desire. It also offers a dusty respite for music-loving hipsters who’d rather drive in the dark, twenty minutes down a dirt road, and see their favorite band in a small, quaint, quirky venue. Upcoming acts to perform at the weirdly wonderful watering hole include Little Dragon, Future Islands, and the Pixies.
Integratron
Pros: Positive vibes, hippie hotties, soundbaths
Cons: Paying for basically sleeping, hard to get into
Attracts: Mystics and UFO freaks
Website: integratron.com
This historical structure is a tabernacle and energy machine situated on a powerful geomagnetic vortex in the magical Mojave Desert. It's sort of like a temple for hippies, freaks, sound designers, and everyone interested in the Earth’s electrostatic resonance. The Integratron is just as mad and magical as it seems.
The domed building near Joshua Tree National Park was designed by George Van Tassel who based the structure on a mixture of architectural aspects from Moses’ tabernacle, Tesla’s theorizing, and extraterrestrial suggestion. Apparently, the site was built on the magnetic crossbars of geomagnetic energy—energy that draws thousands of people a year to create their art, make music videos, participate in purifying and energizing "soundbaths," and time travel. Soundbaths are available in limited amounts, but you have to jump on reserving a spot.
Neon Carnival
Pros: Games, dames, the party never ends, brag factor
Cons: Impossible to get into
Attracts: VIP and celebs
Website: facebook.com/neoncarnival
If look-a-like babes and bottle service Brent Bolthouse-style is your standard weekend fare, mix it up a little by doing all of that from the light-emblazoned magic of the Neon Carnival. Basically like a super trendy club with only VIPs and a carefully-curated carnival, you have to know someone to get into the Neon Carnival.
Wristbands are more valuable than water on the polo fields of Coachella, and if you manage to get one to the Sunday night party, you’ll have to make it through the door and past celebs like Usher and Paris Hilton. Dancing, rides, and carnival games are all part of the fun. Vibing out until the wee hours of the morning after the gates of Coachella have closed isn’t so bad either. Last year, if you spent more than $250 at Armani Exchange, you could score a wristband to Neon Carnival. So, if you’re into looking like a douche for the sake of exchanging sweat with the in-crowd, figure it out.