President's Weekend Older-Mom Girls Trip: Indian Wells Pickleball Edition

One thing I will say for the Park City School District calendar: we do not do a full ski week for President's Day. We get the Monday. That is all. This is, in my opinion, the correct call — it spreads the breaks out, it keeps families in town for the busiest ski weekend of the year (which is good for the local economy and bad for anyone trying to get a Riverhorse reservation), and it gives me, personally, a perfectly sized window to disappear with my friends without anyone in my house missing me too much.

Mark stayed home with the teens, who didn't want to come anyway. Six of us — all PC moms, all in our mid-forties to early fifties, all friends since our kids were in the same elementary class somewhere around 2014 — flew Saturday morning out of SLC to Palm Springs. We were home Tuesday afternoon. I want to walk you through what an older-mom girls trip looks like at this stage of life, because I see a lot of 30-something bachelorette content and not enough of what comes next.

pickleball mixed doubles — Round-robin at the indoor courts — six women, mid-40s, all PC moms, all uninjured for once.

First, what this trip is not

This is not a bachelorette. This is not a wine-tasting tour where we wear matching shirts. This is not a thirtieth-birthday "WE'RE STILL FUN!" trip where we end up in a club at 1 a.m. asking each other if we're being weird about the babysitter. We are past that. We have lived through that. We are not going back.

This is a trip with a tight format: a clear daytime activity (sport), a clear afternoon activity (water), a single nice dinner each night, and a 9:30 p.m. bedtime that nobody apologizes for.

luxury resort pool deck — The St. Regis pool deck in February — heated, half empty, the only honest reason to leave the house that weekend.

Where we stayed

I have rented the same house in the Movie Colony in Palm Springs three times now. It's a 1950s mid-century with a pool, four bedrooms, a casita, a giant kitchen, and an outdoor shower. I am not going to share the listing because the four of us who use it would like to keep using it. I will say that for a group of six women, a house beats a hotel by approximately a factor of ten thousand. Six nightstands, six robes, one common kitchen, one pool. The math just works.

pickleball court indoor — We book the courts at PC MARC the second registration opens. Always.

The pickleball

The trip's anchor was pickleball clinics in the morning at Indian Wells and tickets to the BNP Paribas Open qualifying rounds. Now — the BNP main draw runs early-to-mid March, so the timing varies year to year. We hit the qualifying weekend, which is a hack I'll share: tickets are cheaper, the crowds are thinner, and you're sitting on the rail watching world-top-200 players who are absolutely not phoning it in. We ate lunch on the grounds. We watched four matches. We ran into a friend of a friend who lives in Rancho Mirage and now we have plans for next year.

The morning clinics were a couple of hours each, three of the four mornings. We are all decent players — I came up through tennis at Notre Dame in the late 90s, two of the others were collegiate-level, the rest are PC-pickleball-courts-five-mornings-a-week strong — so we did a 4.0-level clinic. Worth every penny. I came home a measurably better player.

The spa day

One full day, no plans, at the Parker Palm Springs spa. I will not write a paragraph trying to convince you. You either understand or you don't. The grounds at the Parker are an actual fever dream. The lemonade stand. The croquet lawn. The pool. We split — three of us did massages, three of us did facials, we all reconvened poolside, and we did not look at our phones for seven hours. This is the closest I have come to peace in a calendar year.

spa relaxation — Apres-pickleball spa hour is non-negotiable on this trip.

The dinners

Three dinners. One at the house (we cooked — pasta, salad, a stupid amount of olive oil, two bottles of something Mediterranean). One at Mr. Lyons Steakhouse, which is the right vibe for a girls-trip dinner — old Hollywood, dim, leather banquettes, a martini that takes itself seriously. Sit at the bar if you can. One at a casual Mexican spot near the house that I will let you discover on your own.

What I will say about Mr. Lyons specifically is that it is the kind of restaurant where six women in their late forties wearing actual outfits — not athleisure, not workout-to-dinner — are correctly dressed. I wore a black dress and one of my Kemo Sabe felts. Two of the others wore vintage. The youngest of us wore a slip dress and was the most overdressed. Nobody photographed the food. We were busy.

What I packed

Two pairs of pickleball shoes (one to play in, one to break in for next time).
Three swimsuits.
Three pool cover-ups, including one that I have been wearing since 2018 and refuse to retire.
One straw Kemo Sabe for daytime, one felt for the steakhouse.
One denim jacket.
Zero ski gear. The point.
One book I did not open.

Main Street dinner — Dinner on Main is the one night we put on actual outfits — Riverhorse, every year.

The cost honesty

I'll give you ranges because I think we should talk about this more openly. Flights SLC-PSP run $200-400 round-trip if you book early. The Movie Colony house split six ways for four nights came out to about $400 each. Pickleball clinics were $85 a session. The Parker spa varies wildly — budget $300-500 per person depending on what you book. BNP qualifying tickets are under $40. Mr. Lyons is a real-money dinner; figure $150 a person with a cocktail and wine. So you're at maybe $1500-2000 per person all in for a four-night trip. For comparison, a single ski-week Christmas hotel night in Park City is roughly the same.

What I'd say to a PC mom planning her first one of these

Pick the activity first. Sport, art, food, music — pick one. The trip needs an anchor.
Six is the right number. Four is too few when one person is having an off day. Eight is logistically a nightmare.
Rent a house. Always.
One nice dinner. Don't try to make every dinner the dinner. People get tired.
Build in a no-plan day. The spa day was the secret.
Leave Sunday night, fly home Tuesday. Do not fly home Monday with the rest of the country.

I came home Tuesday afternoon. Mark was at his desk. Maddie was at the kitchen counter doing something on her phone. Jax was somewhere with a camera. Nobody mentioned that I'd been gone. This is, I have come to understand, the highest possible compliment. — Tricia P.