We arrive at Palm Spring before noon, stop at the Visitors' Center, ask for architecture of the 60's and 70's. Eddie suggests we check out the "Movie Colony" homes (Elvis Presley's house is there), a closeby residential neighbourhood with houses built in that period.

We especially notice a flat-roofed aluminum-and-wood house with desert mock-up as a front garden. On the Albert Frey Buildings Tour Map that place is clumsily described as "House Neutra." Does this mean that Frey had Richard Neutra in mind when he built this house or that the owner's name is Neutra. Why isn't it called "Neutra House" the way "Carey House" is about an inch in the north-east direction on the xeroxed hand-drawn map then?

There is the same sign at both automobile and pedestrian entrances. It reads something close to:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
no trespassing
armed response

We take a good look at the house without getting too close. We're sure they don't really mean it but we never know...

In this area, the exterior sign of wealth, apparently more than a Porsche or Gucci glasses, is a green garden around your house. The countryside and the mountains all around Palm Springs are brown and yellow. Entering PS I notice a radical change in the color scheme reminding me that plants can be green. The Movie Colony area is noticeably greener than the rest of the city. The only cars parked in the street are the pick-ups of the hispanic gardeners. A few home owners, including House Neutra's, must have noticed this idiosyncracy and have chosen to integrate their garden more into the landscape by choosing rocks, pebbles and sand instead of palm trees, laurel trees and grass.

The streets are almost empty during the day. People come out at night. With such a heat, this makes sense. From our RVers perspective it is difficult to imagine what Palm Springs citizens do during the day.

Going to the Desert Museum we pass through the Desert Shopping Center. All the shops have moved out. A very relevant name for such a place.

It seems that Palm Springs has tried to attract visitors by investing quite heavily into real estate but it didn't work out and now it feels like a ghost town.