DESERT HOT SPRINGS

PHOTO FROM THE MIRACLE SPRINGS WEBSITE

Last Wednesday, my husband, Bob, and I set out for a relaxing 3-day vacation at the Miracle Springs Resort and Spa just outside of Palm Springs. Relaxing being the operative word…no Mardi Gras high-jinks this time, sorry, folks.

WEDNESDAY

On the way out, we stopped at the Ontario Mills Outlet. By the time my shopping orgy was complete, all the restaurants were closed. We didn’t think we could make it to the Wheel Inn at Cabazon before starving to death. Considering the fact that the last time we went to the Wheel Inn, the waitress had her thumb stuck in my slice of pie, we weren’t that keen on it anyways. We drove around and the only thing open was an Applebee’s. Now I had never been to an Applebee’s. I had no idea what was in store for me. It was like they took everything “American”, the concepts of wholesome food, cozy diners, and patriotic neighborhood barbecues, and put them into a giant grinder, to which they added enough plastic fillers to churn out the restaurant equivalent of a Chicken McNugget.

We were comforted by the warm waters once we arrived at the hot springs. The courtyard at Miracle Springs is perfectly landscaped to enhance the privacy of the individual hot tubs, so you feel like you are all alone with the swaying palm trees and warm desert breeze. The rooms are more like a Motel 6 with room service, but the courtyard is 4-star. We ordered breakfast Thursday morning, not expecting much, and were blown away. Their eggs benedict used real Holland rusks, and they hit a home run with the always difficult hollandaise. It was perfectly rich and just slightly lemony. The biscuits and gravy had super fluffy biscuits, sprinkled with a handful of sausage and blanketed with a gravy of pure velvet. If they filled up one of those hot tubs with that gravy I would probably climb in and never leave.

THURSDAY

Thursday afternoon we decided to have stone massages in their spa. My masseuse beat the living crap out of me. As I gingerly sank into a hot tub with Bob, I asked him about his massage. He said, “It was fine, but she kept talking to me like we were in the Lord of the Rings, like, “…as you continue on your journey, you see some friends and stop to play. But they go off to swim and you know you must continue your journey alone. These stones I am putting between your toes will help you along this journey…” So maybe I was not the unlucky one in the masseuse lottery, suffering only a mild beating.

FRIDAY

Friday night was our big night. We had reservations at Vallauris. It is a romantic French restaurant where we had spent a magical evening a few years before. It is very chi-chi and pricy, but the food was so good, it was worth it. I still dream of their Trio of Crème Brulee. It started to rain, so we knew there might be some scrambling and disorder since most of their tables are in an outdoor courtyard. They tried to seat us at a rickity patio table set inside the doorway. I made a half-hearted, good-sport attempt to stuff myself into the cramped corner, then realizing the floor was horribly slanted, I requested and received a nice table inside.

Our waiter looked like Don Rickles and pulled that weird French waiter “menu test” on us, smirking patronizingly when Bob asked what Calvados was and smiling approvingly when I knew to order the filet mignon rare. I was torn between the lobster cocktail and fois gras for the appetizer. He recommended the fois gras, but I decided to order them both (you only live once). As he left, I thought, “I hope he recommended Fois Gras because it is amazing, and not because the lobster sucks.”

The Fois Gras was not quite as good as at Peristyle. It was more like meat, cooked right through, rather than a bursting bag of flavorful fat. But it was still outrageously good. The lobster cocktail confused me. It was covered in a heavy cream sauce instead of a tomato-based cocktail sauce. I took a bite, and tasted…FISH…ugh. I looked closer and realized the sauce was blanketed with smelt roe. What were they thinking? Were we on a hidden camera show? Bob, who loves roe, tried it and was also repulsed. I called over Don Rickles, and kindly whispered, “I’m sorry, I don’t like caviar…” He replied haughtily, “That’s why I told you not to order it.” And disappeared with the horrific concoction in hand. He returned, offering to make one without the roe. But the cream sauce was an anomoly, and to be honest, the lobster was rubbery too. So I declined.

The busboy took our appetizer plates and brought our entrees. My gigantic filet was cooked perfectly and had a rich red wine reduction. Bob’s veal was a huge double-cut chop with a nice apple-Calvados sauce (almost a Normandy sauce). We feasted with carnivorous abandon for about 20 minutes until Bob decided he wanted another glass of wine. We realized we had not seen our waiter since the lobster incident. We waited. And waited. We decided we no longer wanted wine. We waited longer and decided we did not want dessert anymore either. When the busboy cleared our table, we did not ask him for our waiter, because we assumed that the plates returning to the kitchen would cue the waiter to return for a dessert order. We waited. I joked, “Maybe our waiter went home.”

Finally, we stood up and the busboy said, “Thank you. Have a good night.” The Maitre d’ said, “Thank you. Have a good night.” At this point we ostensibly could have walked out on the tab. But my conscience is even stronger than my fear of being caught. Bob and I told the Maitre d’ of our experience, and told him we would wait in the bar for our bill. He offered to buy us drinks, but I refused. It’s like a guy cheating on you and showing up with flowers the next day. It is insulting in its inadequacy.

The maitre d’ returned, aghast. He informed me that the waiter had gone home and forgotten to tell anyone to take over our table. He kept trying to buy us drinks and I kept refusing. Really, he should have torn up the check. I chose not to push it in order to keep things from turning ugly. Had I not been loopy from champagne, I probably could have negotiated not only a free dinner, but a foot rub out of him, as mortified as he was. He was so flustered, he kept trying to put the wrong coats on us, in spite of the fact that they were clearly tagged.

Our original plan for the rest of the evening had been to see the Bay City Rollers at a local pub one town over in Palm Desert. I had expected to get directions from someone at Le Vallauris, but clearly, things did not end so chummily. So I called the Spa Casino nearby. An extremely friendly girl answered the phone. When I asked about the club, Ducky McGoo’s, or some such thing, she squealed, “Oh My God!!!! I Loooooove that place!!! I go there all the time! I know exactly where it is!!!” I was thinking, “This girl is wasted. Why is she answering the phone at the front desk?” She said, “Take Desert Road and it turns into the 111 and turn left at Fred Travelina and you’re there.” I asked, “Go East or West on Desert Road?” She said “It’s what I like to call West.” What??? But we had already had one experience ruined, and we were damned well going to see the Bay City Rollers if it killed us. And I wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t.

Armed with these dubious directions, we set off and sure enough the street became the 111. Buoyed by this validation of our directions, we continued confidently down the winding desert highway in the pouring rain. Out the window blackness stretched out in every direction. A great yawning maw of blackness. I was starting to get nervous when I finally spotted lights and an exit marked 111. I said, “take 111!”
“It’s an exit.”
“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that it has the same number as the freeway?”
“What the %$#$? Now we’re on the 10!!”
“I told you to take that exit.”
“Permission to turn around and go back to the hotel?”
“Permission granted.”

Ha! How naïve we were to think that we could just turn around and go back to the hotel. I laugh at our naivete…ha! No, it would not be that simple. There are no exits in that stretch of the desert. We drove. And drove. And drove. I offered helpfully, “We’re halfway home, why don’t we just have the hotel Fedex our luggage back to us?”

Bob said, “You didn’t get your crème brulee, but how about some peanut-butter thumb pie?” I looked up and recognized the spooky glow of Cabazon. I agreed, “Yes, actually, I would love some thumb pie right about now.”

There is always something slightly surreal about the Wheel Inn. I mean something even beyond the riotous decor, 1960's glowing orb lights and overwhelming profusion of steer horns. This night a large crowd of Edison workers in big yellow haz-mat-looking suits were coming out as we entered. It felt a little “Repo Man”. We ordered a slice of peanut-butter pie and coffee. It was better than I remembered, thick and gooey, creamy and fluffy, somehow heavy and light at the same time. The hostess and waitress were more welcoming and friendly than anyone we’d encountered thus far. I asked for directions to Palm Desert and it was confirmed that “What I call West” is actually what the rest of us call “East”. I asked the waitress what would have happened had we taken the 111 exit. She slowly and ominously shook her head, noooo. I ordered a banana shake for the road (You know, just in case we got lost in the desert or something). The waitress said, “It’ll be a minute…we put the ice cream in the back when the power went out.” I said, “Oh, that’s why all the guys in the Edison suits were here.” She looked at me unblinkingly and said, “No.”

That banana shake was so thick I just about turned my face inside out on the ride home trying to suck it through the straw. We somehow managed to make it back to the hotel just in time to get some sleep and pack up in the morning.

SATURDAY

Naturally, we headed right back to the Wheel in for breakfast. I ordered almost half the menu. Everything was just right. The bacon was crisp without being burned. The eggs were fluffy without being watery. The grits were thick without being gluey. I took a chance on the corned beef hash, which can be iffy at the wrong place. It was salty and rich with perfect little diced potatoes. The only thing I would have preferred was to have big chunks of corned beef. Ground corned beef reminds me a little too much of cat food. But that is just personal preference. The biscuits were fluffy and the gravy velvety smooth. I asked Bob, “Where are all these people out here learning to make biscuits and gravy?” I wanted to run next door to the Burger King and drag people out of their seats and shake them, screaming of their madness.

As Bob was considering his pie options, a trucker passed by and chimed in, “Coconut”, so we got a slice of coconut cream pie and peanut butter pie to go. Later that evening, that pie had us in such fits of ecstacy we were swaying around like Stevie Wonder.

Now we are ruined. No other pie will ever do. I know that in some random moments our eyes will meet, and day or night, we will be helpless to do anything but get into the car and head out for a long drive in the direction that I like to call "East".