Rancho Mirage: Sunnylands, Parks and Trails

Reasons to visit Rancho Mirage include Sunnylands, trails through the desert landscape, and cultural and community offerings. For trip planning, it helps to distinguish activities by type: a guided tour, outdoor recreation, or live entertainment and events.

Sunnylands and Live Entertainment

Sunnylands is the former home of ambassadors Walter and Leonore Annenberg in Rancho Mirage. A guided shuttle tour travels across the 200-acre estate and takes in the landscape, art, and golf course. The ride highlights several different aspects of the estate. Tour schedules and availability may change; check before your visit.

The Show at Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa Rancho Mirage offers a different program. It features live entertainment, with acts from classic rock, country music, and A-list comedy. Individual performances change over time. For reference, The Show is located at the corner of Bob Hope Drive and Ramon Road in Rancho Mirage, California.

Desert Landscape, Trails, and Parks

Blixseth Mountain Park features native desert landscaping, walking trails, and benches. The benches provide places to take in the desert and mountain panoramas. Rancho Mirage also has a Class I bike path along the Whitewater Channel. The park’s walking trails and the channel’s bike path offer different ways to spend time outdoors. If you plan your bike ride around the Whitewater Channel, check the current route in advance.

Rancho Mirage Community Park brings additional amenities together in one named location: it has a shaded children’s play area with climbing structures and is home to the Rancho Mirage Amphitheater. The amphitheater hosts community events throughout the year; its bleacher seating accommodates up to 1,000 guests. For a specific event date, check the listing for that date, since the annual overview does not replace planning for a particular visit.

Casa Chiquita is also now part of Rancho Mirage Community Park and can be viewed by residents and visitors. Visitor rules may have changed, so confirm the conditions before visiting. Rancho Mirage Dog Park is a separate amenity, with separate fenced grassy areas for large and small dogs.

The Observatory: Historical Program Details

A library program brochure for December 2022 through February 2023 describes public exploration nights at the Rancho Mirage Observatory. In suitable weather, a PlaneWave Instruments CDK 700 telescope then provided views magnified 100 to 350 times of planets, nebulae, star clusters, and other celestial objects. These details refer to that program period; program details may have changed.

The same program brochure describes daytime tours during which visitors, when available, could observe the sun through a solar telescope, visit the Cosmic Office, and attend a presentation in the Integrated Space Theater inside the dome. Availability of the solar viewing was explicitly conditional. When planning your trip, you can distinguish between the observatory program as historically described, a tour of Sunnylands, and the trails and event venues in the parks.

Discover more destinations: La Quinta, Perris, Blythe, Moreno Valley, Indian Wells, Canyon Lake, Banning, Hemet.

For the broader travel overview: Riverside.