PALM SPRINGS - I don't go looking for celebrities. I don't play golf. And I can't afford big-time shopping sprees.

Could somebody like me still find happiness in Palm Springs, the desert resort in southern California that's renowned for movie stars, golfers and the wealthy who can shop until they drop?

The answer is "yes," but with some "buts."

Here's a town with a great climate - about 350 days of sun a year. In winter, daytime temperatures are in the balmy 70s (summer sizzles into the 100s).

The outdoors fun is endless: golf, tennis, bicycling, horseback riding, swimming, balloon rides, hiking. Plus, of course, wonderfully lazy hours by the pool (and Palms Springs has plenty of pools - 8,000 of them).

There's great scenery, too. Sheer, rocky mountains tower 10,000 feet above Palm Springs; the tawny desert is at its front door. Red bougainvillea drapes the Spanish-style buildings. And the palm trees that line the streets really do sway in the breeze.

So, Palm Springs is a vacation paradise, perfect for pleasant strolling, drinking in the local life, right? Not quite. Southern California car culture rules even here.

Lots of Palm Springs' streets have no sidewalks. And Palm Canyon Drive, the main street of shops and restaurants, often reverberates to three lanes of one-way traffic and the pulsating car stereos (and pulsating hormones) of college students on spring break. (The only car that ever stopped for me to cross at a corner had Washington state license plates.)

My big trouble, though, on a visit to Palm Springs at the end of March, was that I couldn't find any feeling of real life, any heart to the town.

In Mediterranean or Mexican towns that have an equally wonderful climate, there's always a square or boulevard where the locals - and tourists - gather. Where kids play, adults sip coffee in an outdoor cafe, where everyone watches everyone else. Where normal, daily life is lived in a people-oriented, not car-dominated place.

But around Palm Springs, most of the life goes on behind the tall fences of private homes or within the hotels (some of them lavish mini-cities with hundreds of rooms, pools, golf courses, restaurants, spas and more). I guess that's what happens when a town grows up catering to the wish of the wealthy for secluded getaways.

Once a watering hole for the Agua Caliente Indians, who congregated at its natural springs, Palm Springs now is a suburban-style homeland to 40,000 people year-round (that number easily doubles during busy tourist times).

I drove around, walked around and then took a bus tour of the town. The only people visible in the residential neighborhoods were gardeners, tending the already perfect grass and shrubs of the million-dollar homes.

"The big industries in Palm Springs are pool maintenance and gardening," joked the tour guide, as 25 of us zipped around the neighborhoods in a Celebrity Tours bus.

We didn't spot any celebrities on our tour. Not even Sonny Bono, the former singer and, until recently, Palm Springs mayor. Bono is running for the U.S. Senate, but he's best known as the former partner, in life and song, of actress/singer Cher.

On the celebrity tour, we mostly saw a lot of nice houses where movies stars and other famous folks used to live. Like Truman Capote, Lawrence Welk, Jack Benny, Liberace (the mailbox at his former house is shaped like a piano) and Ronald Reagan. And the homes where Kirk Douglas and Zsa Zsa Gabor sometimes still reside.

As we peered over the hedges from the bus, I kept wondering . . . if you were really rich and famous, would you want a vacation home where people like me could come and stare at your house? I didn't think so.

Lots of the stars, and the merely wealthy, have headed to more fashionable resort areas such as La Quinta, Indian Wells and Rancho Mirage where they live in gated compounds, replete with pools and golf courses.

These rival resort towns, which share the 45-mile-long Coachella Valley with Palm Springs and together boost the valley's population to 225,000, are as soaked in money as their brilliantly green golf courses are soaked in water. And they, not Palm Springs, are also home to some of the fanciest new hotels, the most exclusive golf clubs and the Betty Ford Clinic (where the famous and not-so-famous seek treatment for alcohol and drug abuse).

Still, the image persists, from Palm Springs' 1930s and '40s heyday, that the town is the playground for the stars. Out at the airport there's even a commuter airline called Million Air.

But the reality isn't quite so glitzy. Sure, Palm Canyon Drive does have some very swanky stores - Gucci and Mondi boutiques, antique stores and the Desert Fashion Plaza, an upscale mall.

But there are plenty of souvenir stores along Palm Canyon Drive, full of tacky T-shirts and postcards of near-naked ladies (and men). And the recession and competition from nearby resort towns have bit hard: going-out-of business sales and empty storefronts dot Palm Canyon Drive.

Still, Palm Springs is usually full of people having a good time - from students cramming six into a room at a budget motel to families and very tanned, very slim couples in pastel outfits who frequent the luxury hotels and private villas.

Where does everybody come from?

Most of Palm Springs' visitors come from California - Los Angeles is just a two-hour drive to the west. Some come from the Seattle area - we provide about 2 percent of Palm Springs' estimated 2 1/2 million annual visitors.

Others are bona fide snowbirds, fleeing Chicago and other frozen places where winter goes on and on. And plenty of seniors have set up home in Palm Springs; about a quarter of residents are retired.

Most visitors to Palm Springs park themselves in comfortable hotels or condos. For families, the big hotels can be an easy one-stop vacation - room, restaurants and recreation all in one place.

That's one of the big appeals of Palm Springs for many people - it's a great place to take it easy by the pool. To just do nothing and banish all stress. There's no foreign language, foreign money or unfamiliar customs to contend with. And, unlike a lot of Mexican resorts, you don't have to worry about drinking the water.

Plus for Seattleites it's often cheaper to get to Palm Springs than Hawaii.

And then, of course, there's golf. And golf and golf and golf.

Palm Springs and other Coachella Valley resort towns boast about 100 golf courses, incongruous splashes of neon green amid the desert and bare rocky mountains. (Palm Springs averages less than 5 1/2 inches of rain a year; most of its water comes from wells and from the Colorado River, some 240 miles away).

You could golf endlessly, although it isn't cheap; greens fees at courses open to the public range from about $35 to $150 or more. (Only a few hotels have their own golf courses; however, most big hotels have reserved time at country clubs.) Or you could watch golf tournaments galore (mostly at Indian Wells and La Quinta) everything from the Frank Sinatra Celebrity Invitational to the Dinah Shore LPGA tournament.

Yet if, like writer Mark Twain, you consider golf "a good walk spoiled," there's always tennis. Lots of it. There are about 700 courts scattered around hotels and parks in Palm Springs and the other resorts, plus championship tennis tournaments at hotels such as the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort in Indian Wells.

"Well, what do you do here if you don't golf," mused one man at my hotel, a fellow non-golfer. "And there's no beach. I've never gone on vacation before where there's not natural water. It's sort of strange."

Like him, for a warm-weather vacation I usually head for somewhere with a beach. But if you're really missing the beach, you could catch the waves at the Oasis Water Park, Palm Springs' 21-acre water playground where a wave pool produces a 4 1/2-foot surf.

And there are plenty of other diversions around Palm Springs . . . the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway which takes you swooping 8,000 feet up into the mountains; Indian Canyons, a haven of undeveloped canyons, palm oases and mountains; and Joshua Tree National Monument, a preserve of rocks, cacti and the wierdly-shaped Joshua trees (for details, see story on J 13). You could even take day tours to Disneyland and Universal Studios, about a two-hour drive away from Palm Springs.

And then there are the simple pleasures of Palm Springs. Listening to the desert birds in the quiet of the early morning. Picking a ripe grapefruit or orange from a tree. Watching the sun drop behind the mountains. Watching the stars, sharp in the desert night.

Before too long, though, there could be less simple pleasures in Palm Springs.

The Agua Caliente Indians recently opened the door to commercial gambling. After years of opposition, the tribe voted in February to establish a casino on their land. The Agua Caliente own about half of the land in Palm Springs; some major hotels and the convention center are built on land leased from them (other Indian-owned downtown sites sit empty, awaiting development).

Casino promoters now are swarming around with proposals, doubtless with visions of Las Vegas dancing in their heads. (However, California law, for now, prohibits the lucrative slot machines.)

Gambling could be an economic blessing to some Palm Springs businesses. But other townspeople, including former mayor Sonny Bono, have said they're worried about what gambling could do to Palm Spring's carefully cultivated upscale image.

The Indians are not amused by Bono's criticism. Still, they just might have a job for Bono, reports the Los Angeles Times.

If the tribe needs a lounge act in their casino, they might consider hiring Bono, said tribal historian Anthony Andreas: "If he gets Cher back."