Shields Date Gardens – Indio, California – or Sex in the Afternoon

Ahh…We love Shields! I have been visiting Shields since, ahem…the late 70s. I was attending university in Southern California and my friends and I would head to Palm Springs for the weekends during the blistering heat of the summer and then on Saturday afternoons we would drive to Shields for a nice cold date shake and a bit of a sex movie! More on that later.

Yes, in those days when you headed east on either Hwy 111 or Interstate 10 from Palm Springs to Indio there was nothing, I mean literally.   Boy have things changed in over 30 years and no surprise. But the Coachella Valley, today, feels like almost any big city with bumper to bumper traffic and strip malls everywhere. But head to Shields and you feel like you are a million miles away and 50 years in the past.

They not only have a date store but they also sell fabulous date shakes. Try one out and also buy some dates or date crystals to take home with you.

Then once you have your shake in hand follow the signs to the theater and step inside to watch the continuously running, free, yes, I said free, movie titled, “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date”. Enthralling, entertaining, and your life will be forever changed by this short little adaption detailing how Shields began and how to grow dates. Yes, Romance and Sex in the afternoon.

In recent years they have added an outdoor cafe which overlooks the date gardens and has tasty food.

But wait, there’s more! Shields recently added a new “Garden”.  As of October 2013 you can now enter a beautiful 17 acre garden with 23 statues and 14 scenes depicting Christ’s life. You can walk the paths in complete peacefulness and serenity and feel you are all by yourself in this area of southern California that has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. Luckily we were the only ones in the garden at the time and it was a world of it’s own. Beautiful, magical, well designed, and perfectly manicured. Even if you are not religious it is still a wonderful walk.

Note – There is a fee for entering this garden but if you eat lunch there you can enter for free. Well worth it if you want some solitude from the hectic life outside the gates of this garden.