The hook
Behind a pink wall in Rancho Mirage sits the mid-century estate where presidents and kings came to talk, its gardens now free and open to anyone.
01Why it's worth it
Walter and Leonore Annenberg built Sunnylands in 1966 as a winter retreat, a pink-roofed modernist house by the architect A. Quincy Jones set in two hundred acres of desert with eleven lakes and its own golf course, and they used it to host the powerful: presidents from Eisenhower onward, the Queen of England, Hollywood at its height. It's been called the West Coast Camp David, and it still hosts high-level retreats. What most people don't realize is that you can visit. The Center and its nine acres of gardens, planted with desert species in sweeping drifts, are free and open to the public most of the year, and for a ticket you can tour the house itself, kept as it was, art collection and all. It's a rare open window onto a private world of real consequence.
02How to experience it
It's on Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage, about eight hours from the Bay. The Center and Gardens are free and open Wednesday through Sunday from mid-September into early June, and closed through the summer heat; house tours are ticketed and book up ahead. Come in the cooler months, both for the estate's own season and your comfort.