Tahquitz Canyon

At Palm Springs’ southwest edge, the desert strips off its city clothes and reveals a starkly scenic landscape of red rock, fan palms, barrel cactus and bighorn sheep. Tahquitz Canyon’s crystalline creek, fed by snowmelt from the San Jacinto Mountains, creates a lush garden of desert lavender and honey mesquite, a surreal contrast to Palm Springs’ arid climate. The canyon’s easy 2-mile loop trail offers a big payoff: a 60-foot waterfall that plummets over polished granite, framed by an assemblage of Fremont cottonwoods and western sycamores. The falls gush the strongest in winter and spring. Tahquitz’s other treasures include quartzladen boulders, cliffs stained with desert varnish, and thousand-year-old Cahuilla rock art and bedrock mortars. To get the most out of your visit, take a free ranger-led walk, offered four times daily.

500 W. Mesquite Ave., Palm Springs; 760-416-7044; tah quitzcanyon.com. Fee: $12.50 adults, $6 children ages 6-12

Palm, Andreas and Murray canyons

On a separate Cahuillaowned parcel, a single entrance fee gains you entrance to three unique canyons. The most popular is Palm Canyon, where lush stands of California fan palms extend for nearly 15 miles. Considered the world’s largest oasis of native Washingtonia filifera, these century-old palms are crowned by massive fanshaped fronds dense enough to block out the sun. Touch the sulfur-scented ribbons of water flowing across the canyon sand, and you’ll feel the heat of natural hot springs. Many visitors simply hike out and back on the Palm Canyon Trail to maximize their time in the shade. You can also connect to Victor or East Fork/Fern Canyon trails to loop back on a cactus-strewn ridge. Palm Canyon’s stream is often just a mellow trickle, but a few times a year, it rages high enough to flood the access road and close the canyon.

In neighboring Andreas Canyon, a breezy stand of fan palms contrasts with steeply angled rock formations, and a year-round stream gives life to more than 150 plant species. In spring, this canyon bursts into an embarrassment of flowery riches, including school-bus-yellow brittlebush, bright red chuparosa, and orange mallow. Andreas Canyon’s mile-long loop trail is ideal for casual walkers; a more challenging 4-mile round-trip leads into palmshaded Murray Canyon, its mouth guarded by tilted rock outcrops pointing toward the sky. Murray Canyon narrows, twists and turns, gradually revealing its secrets: 100-foot-high vermilion cliffs, clusters of native reeds and grasses, chubby barrel cactus clinging to craggy slopes, and songbirds clustered in the rustling palm fronds. (Watch for the endangered least Bell’s vireo and the brilliant yellow, hooded oriole.) After more than a dozen stream crossings, the path ends at the base of the Seven Sisters, a multitiered waterfall.

38500 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs; 760-3236018; www.indian-canyons. com. Fee: $9 adults, $5 children ages 6-12.

Mecca Hills Wilderness

Not far from Indio’s date farms, the Mecca Hills Wilderness shelters a maze of pastel-hued canyons formed