The Palm Springs Self-Driving Windmill Tours is an interactive, educational and fun tour for friends and family. The tour is curated by Randy Buckmaster, Tour Manager, in which he will guide you along with a video and audio program and marked destination’s throughout the first commercial wind farm in the United States. The tour takes you on a journey of 10 marked stops starting with a display yard of non-operating wind turbines of successes and failures, along with a stop to a real generating wind turbine where you can get up close and take pictures. The tour continues through a solar farm and ends with a stop at the old gas plant. There you can exit on 19th Avenue to Indian Canyon Road more knowledgeable about renewable energy! The tour takes approximately one hour depending on your pace. 

Features and benefits of Self-Driving Tours include:

  1.  Customers will arrive in their own automobile, check in electronically and then engage in a self-driving tour curated by audio with video stopping at ten points of interest identified by clearly visible markers.
  2. The audio/video tour is sent along with an email confirmation after booking with options to view online, or just listen to a podcast in audio format on a sanitized tablet.
  3. Customers are encouraged to stop and exit the car to view up to 10 exhibits with 11 and 12 as optional ending up above a vista for great photo ops, but are required to wear masks at all times while on property and stay within 50 feet of the markers for safe social distancing.
  4. A ranger will be on property to make sure requirements are enforced or for other purposes should the need arise.
  5. Upon entering the private wind farm, customers are scheduled to start every 15 minutes to allow for ample time for each party to review the exhibits.
  6. At each point of interest they will be allowed out of their automobiles, but required to be masked and stay within 50 ft. of the markers and experience no interaction with any other group as the markers are at least 50 yards apart.
  7. The tour headquarters building will remain closed to ensure that there will be no ability by the visitors to interact with anyone other than their own family/group.
  8. No vehicle will be allowed to contain more than eight persons. 

The Self-Driving Tours are available to book online at $49.00 per car (Max. 8 persons* by car). For more information on the Self-Driving Tours, visit windmilltours.com. 

About Palm Springs Windmill Tours LLC: The wind farm was established in 1982 by Wintec Energy in Palm Springs. Today, the collective wind farms in the San Gorgonio pass provide power for hundreds of thousands of homes per day. The Palm Springs Windmill Tours was originally established in 1998, then closed after the 9/11 event and re-opened in 2014. Today, they provide power for hundreds of thousands of homes per day.