Introduction and Redemption

This is round two of Chestnut’s review series on Hilton hotels.

I already knew last year that the Indian Wells Masters would be held in March. Even though the exact schedule had not yet been released, I knew there would definitely be matches on the second and third weekends of March, so I redeemed this room before the full schedule came out.

As it turned out, this early move was absolutely the right call. After the detailed schedule was released, Chestnut couldn’t resist searching nearby award rooms again and found that standard rooms were already completely OOS!

At the time, the cash rate was just over 900USD, while a standard award room cost 80,000 Hilton points. That worked out to more than 1 cent per Hilton point. Chestnut pulled off another big win!

PS: Be sure to read to the end and prepare to be brainwashed by Chestnut’s famous quote!

Check-in

In the morning, we drove from LA to La Quinta. We decided to stop and stretch our legs in Redlands along the way.

Of course, since this is Chestnut, trains are an essential part of the post.

This is Metrolink’s Arrow Line, which opened late last year and uses Stadler DMU trainsets.

After Santa Fe trains stopped serving the station in 1938, the Redlands–Downtown station heard train whistles once again in the fall of 2022, 84 years later.

Without much else to report on the drive, we arrived at the front desk to check in.

After getting the key card, we headed into the room. As always, the key card gets the featured spot first!

We then realized we still hadn’t had lunch, so we went to find a restaurant and fill our stomachs.

After eating, we took a couple of laps around the property to check out the scenery.

BNP Paribas Open | Indian Wells

When it was about time, we took the event-provided shuttle to the venue.

The match we were there to watch was on Stadium 1.

We went in and found the stadium still pretty empty.

First up was a women’s singles match: Jabeur vs Frech.

There was also a drone show between the two matches.

Later, we realized that most people were actually there for the second match, Alcaraz vs Kokkinakis.

I have to admit, Alcaraz really is an absolute beast. He wrapped up the match cleanly and efficiently with two 6–3 sets…

After the match, we took the shuttle back to the hotel.

La Quinta at Night

A few shots of La Quinta after dark—the scenery looks completely different by day and by night!

There’s relatively little light pollution here, so you can even capture stars in the sky without having to avoid streetlights…

And now, on to Chestnut’s room.

Before heading inside, I took a photo of the Big Dipper in the night sky.

Then we slept straight through until morning...

The Next Day

Having breakfast outside the cottage door in the morning was so relaxing!

We sent a text message to the front desk and were told that the latest checkout time was 11:00 AM. Since there was still plenty of time, we wandered around some more.

The fountain looks completely different in the daytime than it does at night.

There was also a Ralph Lauren here. I have no idea whether anyone shops at a place like this...

There are a lot of pools here; this post is just giving one example.

My favorite was this heated Jacuzzi pool. It was perfect for relaxing muscles and easing fatigue!

What is this pole for?

Just kidding—it’s for catching rabbits!

This resort has a lot of interesting corners. Because our time was limited, we really couldn’t explore everything. If you’re interested, feel free to come and do some exploring yourself!

Right before leaving, we discovered there was a mini golf course here, so I couldn’t resist picking up a club and giving it a try.

The result was exactly what you’d expect—I took one swing and tore up a small patch of turf... while the ball only crawled forward a tiny bit...

The Drive Back and a Surprise Along the Way — Cabazon Dinosaurs

It was 11:00 AM, so it was time to check out.

Along the way, I snapped a few shots of the mountains around Palm Springs and the giant wind turbines on the hills!

We made a stop in Cabazon and took some photos of the famous dinosaur statues there!

A T. rex violently pushing down trees.

A brontosaurus munching on a palm tree.

Summary

  • Redeeming 80,000 points got us more than $900 in value. You could say this was about as good as it gets for Hilton points redemptions, with each point worth over 1 cent.
  • If there’s a tennis tournament going on, I recommend booking as soon as the tournament dates are announced. Don’t wait until the detailed match schedule comes out... because by then it’ll be too late.
  • The standard room available on points is in the oldest part of this Resort. The cottage is nearly 100 years old, so the space is a bit tight, and the walls have basically absorbed the fireplace smoke over the years. Airing it out for a long time didn’t help much.
  • I wouldn’t recommend redeeming here if you don’t like rustic style, or else it may give you a very “farm-stay” kind of feeling.
  • It’s probably best not to come in the summer, unless you want the inland heat at peak season to turn Chestnut into roasted chestnuts...

Chestnut’s Signature Brainwashing Quote — Low-Probability Events

Group member: Chestnut, why do you always run into low-probability events? How do all these unlikely things keep happening to you?

Chestnut:

First, haven’t you heard the saying, “Walk east out the front gate, cross the bridge, and you’ll see a man biting a dog”?A dog biting a person is news; is a person biting a dog still just news? No, that’s the kind of post that gets repeated so often it’s practically monthly. So when I talk, I naturally tend to pick news stories involving relatively low-probability events. In that case, what I’m talking about is no longer a random sample at all—it’s influenced by my own subjective selection. That’s what’s known as Berkson’s paradox!

Second, no matter how unlikely an event is, its probability still isn’t zero. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And even someone as bad at math as Chestnut understands one thing: probability is based on a large sample space. If you only play a limited number of times—especially just once—then under that extreme condition, 1% and 99% don’t feel all that different when it comes to what you personally experience (if you get the bad outcome, then you just have bad luck, and that’s that) .

Here’s a profound Chestnut example—haven’t you seen plenty of families out there with four daughters in a row, or four sons in a row? If you calculate that using your scientific method, that’s a pretty low probability, right? But the fact is, some families really do end up with four girls or four boys in a row, so what can you say? Of course, if that family could somehow have 1 million children and satisfy the law of large numbers, then maybe you’d finally get the clean 50/50 scientific probability for boys versus girls that you want!

Group member: Forget humans—what animal can even produce 1 million offspring?

Chestnut: Ocean sunfish. They can lay 100 million eggs. Of course, how many survive to adulthood is another question!

Group member: ...ざわざわ... truly the master of killing a conversation!