If you get lost follow the kitchy knight.

When we left Palm Springs Denise said she wanted to have a date. SO what was I supposed to do?? I went and got her a date! Now most people when they go out to the desert in California think of Hadley’s because of it’s convient location on the 10 freeway (that plus it is right next to a casino and a huge outlet mall). Hadley’s are good, but those however in the know (and yes we are that cool), go to Shields Date Farm in Indio.

Like we could miss it.

Shields Date farm is off Hwy-111 which is the old highway that used to go through the desert before I-10 bisected it. If you are interested in visiting Shields Date Farms you can get there by starting on I-10 but you will need to eventually need to pull onto Hwy-111. You will know you are getting close because you will start to see a bunch of dorky signs (yes, there is nothing like a good road side tourist trap).

It's really hard to miss the signs on the way there.

When you pull up to the Shields Date Farm in Indio, California you will immediately see a giant medieval knight encouraging you to see a movie called “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.” As scandalous as the title seems, the film is far from scandalous. To me it was nothing but a 15 minute commercial, but I did at least learn that there are different types of dates (up until now I thought they were all the same) and that the blonde date is actually a California native (I guess blondes really do come from California).

Despite the movie these dates were very chaste.

After the movie you can go look through the shop. There are many things to see there. What was amazing to me was the variety of products sold that were made out of dates. I kept saying to myself “who knew?!” They have this bar where they have all the different dates out on display and you can try as many as you want. My personal favorites were the medjool dates.

I ended up buying this sampler back of blondes, coconut covered dates, and medjool dates

The very last thing you will want to do is buy yourself a date shake. When we went there they cost us about $3.75 per shake and were pretty big. They are made by using date crystals (whatever that is) and vanilla ice cream. They are really creamy and good on a hot desert day (which is apparently every day in Indio). They kind of have a carmel taste to them.

Don't mess with AJ's shake.