View the Iconic Palm Springs Windmills
When you head from Los Angeles to Palm Springs the first things you see as you get close to Palm Springs are the iconic hundreds of massive white windmills spinning all over the hills with a beautiful landscape of sand and mountain ranges. In this post I’ll point you in the direction of where to stop for photos, and a little background about why these turbines are here.
To Get There
An easy place to park and take photos is at the Palm Springs (PSN) Parking Lot, this is an Amtrak station where you can walk right onto the sand
You can also do a Self-Driving Windmill Tour, which will take you onto private property and give you a close-up view of the giant turbines on a Palm Springs wind farm.
The Windmills
These windmills are an alternative source of clean energy and created in coorperation with NASA and provide enough energy to power the entire Coachella Valley. In order to generate energy, they need wind speeds of at least 13 miles per hour. These are massive structures, the largest having blades that are half the length of a football field, and standing 328 feet tall.
Additional Tips - Photography
The best time to shoot here is early morning because at sunset it’s hard to time because the mountain range starts to block the sun much earlier than the actual sunset. I also find that midday desert shoots can look quite interesting with the harsh desert shadows because the background are generally so washed out.
Do you have any other interesting factoids about the windmills? Leave them in the comments below.
