3 Best Sights in Indio, Palm Springs and the Desert Resorts

To glimpse how the desert looked before development, head 14 miles northeast of Indio to this 20,000-acre preserve watched over by the Bureau of Land Management. It has a system of sand dunes and several palm oases formed when underground water rose up through the San Andreas Fault lines. A variety of increasingly endangered species live here including Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizards, flat-tailed horned lizards, giant red velvet mites, and giant palm-boring beetles. One section, the Thousand Palms Oasis, includes a visitor center, primitive toilets, and a mile-long trail that meanders past pools supporting the tiny endangered desert pupfish. Guided hikes and bird-walks are offered there November through April. Be aware that it's exceptionally hot in summer here.

Indio celebrates its raison d'être each February at its date festival and county fair. The mid-month festivities include an Arabian Nights pageant, camel and ostrich races, and exhibits of local dates, plus monster truck shows, a demolition derby, a nightly musical pageant, and a rodeo.

Sample, select, and take home some of Shields's locally grown dates. Ten varieties are available, including the giant supersweet royal medjools, along with specialty date products such as date crystals, stuffed dates, confections, and local honey. At the Shields Date Garden Café you can try an iconic date shake, dig into date pancakes, or go exotic with a date burger. Breakfast and lunch are served daily.

For almost a century, Shields Family dates have been grown, sold, and enjoyed on this site, which now includes a 105-seat theater showing “The Romance & Sex Life of the Date” on a loop, a store where you can sample the 10 varieties, gulp down a date shake at the original 1960s counter, and purchase all kinds of snacks and sweets featuring the star fruit, a café serving breakfast and lunch, and a walk through a 17-acre date grove and botanical garden that features 23 biblical statues.