Nine moods, one valley

Coachella Valley stretches across 45 miles of southern California desert from the San Bernardino Mountains to the Salton Sea. Within its roughly 15 mile width are nine cities,125 golf courses, the largest concentration of mid-century modern architecture, almost 500,000 residents in April, 200,000 residents in July, an aquifer, many hot springs and 350 days of sunshine a year.

Interstate 10 and Hwy 111 connect it all, though it is hard to tell one city from another without a guide, a good tourist map or the time to exit and explore each individually.

 Working West to East, here are verbal snapshots to guide your trip there.

Palm Springs is best known for its heyday in the 1930s to '60s, when the elite of  Hollywood bought or built winter vacation homes here and began to invest in the area, financing everything from country clubs (Charlie Ferrell and Ralph Bellamy, the Racquet Club of Palm Springs) and hotels (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) to fancy trailer parks (Bing Crosby, Blue Skies in Rancho Mirage and (hardware stores (Alan Ladd). Now its International Film Festival and Modernism Week attract cognoscienti from around the world.

Small portion of the wind farm shot in passing.

Desert Hot Springs sits atop a plethora of hot and cold springs. Its spas attract a steady stream of health seekers and sybarites, who have grown the population from 20 in 1941 to 29,000 today. It is also the windiest area in the valley which explains the huge wind farm on its outskirts. At 262 feet tall, their blade spans the length of a football field, each windmill can power 2,000 homes.

Balloon Glo, Cathedal City

Cathedral "Cat" City is known for its art scene and diverse LGBT and Mexican population. Late night festivals are the thing.

Mission Hills Country Club, Rancho Mirage

Rancho Mirage has evolved from rough and rowdy stop to fortune during the Gold Rush to the playground of presidents. Richard Nixon favored Sunnylands estates, Barack Obama liked the Thunderbird Country Club, after which the Ford Thunderbird was named (Ford's chairman was a member at the time). Speaking of Fords, Gerald Ford lived his last decades here.

El Paseo Shopping District

Palm Desert first attracted the likes of Bing Crosby and Jimmy Stewart and now boasts the El Paseo Shopping District, Fashion Week El Paseo. Palm Desert Food & Wine Festival and The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. Also Hotel Paseo, where the Good Girls stayed. It exudes a hip, boutique vibe and is right in the middle of the shopping action. The restaurant is good, too.

Tennis stadium, site of Indian Wells Masters

Indian Wells was described by one cab driver as "where the really rich and special lived," citing late billionaire Walter Annenberg and President Dwight Eisenhower as among residents of the area's most private estates. Perhaps better known as host of the "fifth Grand Slam of Tennis," its residents spread about among six residential country clubs.

La Quinta Resort and Club

La Quinta, one of two cities in the US to be named after a resort (Beverly Hills is the other), now has 25 top golf courses including six run by PGA West.

World's largest Tamale Festival in in Indio.

Indio is both an agricultural hub and the city of festivals. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival may be tthe most famous but don't discount the Tamale Festival and the granddaddy, the Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival. Toss an active food scene and polo into the mix to bring in even more tourism.

Coachella sits atop fertile land and is known for its farming and Mexican culture and history (Remember Cesar Chavez?). Famous murals, the internationally known El Grito Fiesta Patrias and Dias de los Muertos festivities and Mexican cuisine, have attracted the city's first hotel.

You would be hard pressed to find a more diverse series of adjacent communities, with residents ranging from some of the richest people in the country to some of the poorest. All have a similar goal: to live the American dream. Whether it be luxuriating in the leisure and baubles wealth can provide, hiking and exploring California's golden hills and deserts, creating or raising families and a better future, Coachella Valley offers the opportunity.

Lots of growing going on in Greenwood, SC

Like many county seats in the South, Greenwood, SC, has a charming, antebellum and turn-of-the-century downtown for its population of 23,000. Unlike many of the others, the movers and shakers here work to make sure their downtown - or uptown as they call it - thrives.

Kelly McWhorter of the Greenwood Regional Visitors and Tourism Bureau gave us a quick tour of three adjacent, re-purposed buildings on Main Street that had been turned into a cultural arts center, a community theater home and a science and history museum. All three nonprofits are interconnected as the Emerald Triangle.

Images from the center's files.

The Cultural Center is airy and spacious with well displayed art by regional artists in what was once a federal building built in 1911 as a post office and expanded in the 1930s.

Handsome inside and out.

Since opening in 2006, the 3,300-square-foot gallery space has had 180,000 visitors.

The Museum fills three levels with special exhibits plus permanent ones. The Regional History and 1900s Main Street exhibit takes visitors back in time. Naturally, we had to try on hats in the Milliner's shop.

How's this for 1914 chapeaus?

Given time we would have loved to explore the M. J. "Doc" Rhodes Gems and Minerals Gallery, the Epic Journeys of Animal Migration and the interactive Discovery Lab.

"Footloose" is the next production, opening Oct. 17, 2014.

The Theatre, once a movie house, is home to the thriving Greenwood Community Theatre. Executive Director Stephen Gilbert showed us around the 300-seat facility and talked about the group's success.

Musicals, staged with a 13-15-piece orchestra and at an average cost of $25,000 to $35,000 apiece, are particularly popular, playing to Standing Room Only audiences. There seems to be no lack of enthusiasm on the other side of the curtain: the recent "Wizard of Oz" production drew 212 auditioners for the 70-80-person cast.

It's a true year-round season with main and second stage productions, a children's theater, special events and movies when the stage is dark.

Connected to the Museum but located at the other end of Main Street, The Railroad Historical Center is a work in progress. Historically a railroad and textile town, Greenwood had five different lines coming through it in 1914. Now four of those antique cars are being restored and memorabilia and artifacts collected and displayed.

Speaking of Main Street, Greenwood's was once considered the widest in the world but reconfiguring it to add store front parking ended that status. It's still pretty wide and the convenient parking probably adds to uptown's success.

Topiary to show
Another reason for Greenwood's popularity is its festivals - barbecue, catfish, discovery, 4th of July stars and our favorite, flowers and the giant topiary featured during The SC Festival of Flowers.  It began 47 years ago and peaks the fourth weekend in June. They start putting out the topiary in May and leave it up through most of July.

Prepping for new moss.

We visited horticulturist Ann Barklow, keeper and grower of the Disney-scaled creations, in the greenhouse where volunteers were preparing the beasts for their next plantings.

The original 13 have grown to 40. A giant tiger and gamecock honoring college mascots and safari wildlife from apes to elephants stand waiting for a fresh foundation of moss for the flowers that will make them standouts.

Lunch time brought us to Kickers, a tiny restaurant with huge flavors across from the Farmers Market, where Chef Abdel Dimiati and wife Andrea serve an international, innovative, organic cuisine. His soups are outstanding and dessert, , a fried Oreo, came as a lagniappe. Never would have ordered one but the almost pudding consistency of the cookie and the non-greasy crust was a flavorful surprise.

A surprisingly good fried Oreo.

Don't miss this little gem.

Note the quilt square on side of far left building.

McCormick was another tiny destination, but we were a bit disappointed. The gold mine over which the town is built was closed, the steam-driven cotton gin, one of two in the country, didn't work, the historic house was for sale (its exterior in need of TLC) and the vaunted Quilt Trail was a mere few stops long with small- to medium-sized painted quilt squares.

A quilt square in progress.

With the South Carolina portion of giant Lake Thurmond, the county does have three of the state's six state parks with excellent outdoor recreation facilities including a golf course. Alas, none of them were on our schedule.

Our list of next times is getting awfully long.