Stagecoach

Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum and the Zac Brown Band will anchor the 2013 edition of the country-focused Stagecoach festival, which once again will be held over three late April days at the Empire Polo Grounds in the desert city of Indio. Now in its seventh year, the Goldenvoice-produced festival takes a wide-open view of roots music, booking contemporary Nashville acts alongside legends and newcomers.  The event will take place April 26-28, the weekend directly following next year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

There may be no better time to escape the city for a sun-drenched jaunt to the desert than spring. Flowers are blooming, temperatures are moderate, and music and art beckon with two major festivals — the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival April 15 to 17 and the Stagecoach country music fest April 30 and May 1. This is all on top of the year-round lure of golf, tennis, pools and spas. And for the serious shopper? There's a small but mighty fashion scene to be found in Palm Springs and its southeastern neighbor Palm Desert that includes the same sartorial trappings available in the city (Gucci, Trina Turk, Sephora)

Driving for the pure fun of the road is one of my secret pleasures. Speeding along a highway going no particular place, windows down and the wind blasting my face, is an indulgence I usually choose not to resist. And of all the roads in my life, U.S. 395 is like a love interest that I never quite get enough of.

The wild West Side of Manhattan became Dodge City for a pair of horses turned loose in traffic when a truck collided with a 120-year-old stagecoach. The hit-and-run collision occurred as the Wells Fargo stagecoach headed to a promotional appearance in Union Square. The collision sent the coach's driver flying and flipped the coach on its side. Princess and Hero, the horses pulling the coach, escaped without injury, but continued on through traffic, police said.

Estelle M. Dayley, one of California's first woman stagecoach drivers, died in a convalescent home Friday. She was 103. A daughter of a stagecoach driver, she arrived in California in 1888 from her native state of New York. Mrs. Dayley was one of her father's top cowhands and began driving a stagecoach in her teens in the San Diego area. In 1959 she married Vern Dayley, her second husband, and the couple later moved to Watsonville, where she was known for baskets and leather work. Mrs.

A ghost named Pierre has his private room at Ventura County's Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park, once a stopover for weary travelers riding the bouncing horse-drawn coaches between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. A pair of boots has been placed beside a bed in one of the second-floor rooms, and there is a saddle in the corner. Don't laugh.

Our best source of historical footnotes is old people who remember, but many of them die without ever having told their stories. Some time ago a woman named Josephine Keeler wrote me about her memories of the San Francisco earthquake, in 1906. How many people do you know who were there? Now Mrs. Keeler has written again--this time about a memory that is probably unique. Do you know anyone else who rode in a stagecoach with both John Burroughs and John Muir?

A list of upcoming concerts across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses. Empire Polo Club Stagecoach Festival 2010 with Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood, April 30-May 1 (Fri.) Gibson Amphitheatre Toby Mac, Jan. 22 (Fri.); Power 106 FM's Cali Christmas with Ice Cube and more, Dec. 3 (Sat.) Wiltern Pete Yorn, April 6 (Fri.) Hollywood Palladium Afshin & Mehrshad, Nov. 24 (now) The Music Box Dweezil Zappa, Dec. 3-4 (now)

THE luxury speedboat pulled up to the dock of a sun-dappled hacienda, and a bikini-clad blond dug around the bow searching for something. When she found it, she slipped the slinky, black cocktail dress over her swimsuit and sashayed down a footpath -- through a field of lavender and around the occasional fig tree -- to a swank wine-tasting room. You'd expect that at the waterfront playground of Nice. Just not this Nice.

During a between-song break during their first-ever live performance at Coachella on Saturday night, singer Ben Gibbard introduced the unit he co-founded with Jimmy Tamborello as "an imaginary band called the Postal Service. " He was acknowledging the group's unlikely rise, but the reaction to its music was very real, whether delivered by a make-believe band or a platinum artist.  Ten years ago the two made what they thought would be a one-off side project. Gibbard was taking a break from his day job in Death Cab for Cutie, and Tamborello was looking to further examine a sound he'd forged as Dntel with the underground hit "The Dream of Evan and Chan.