Day 27-June 21, 2016-Shields Date Garden, lunch, casino, brewery
Not as hot today, only got up to 111.
We’ve been concerned about the upcoming 4th of July holiday, knowing that it’s hard to find a campground that’s not full so we spent the morning looking at maps and campground books and making reservations for the next few days. Some places were full and some had fire and smoke problems so we had to call quite a few places to chart a course. But we are set for the next two weeks so we don’t have to think about that for a while. Of course we needed to make a trip to the RV for stuff we forgot again. We decided to go out to lunch to Shields Date Garden. We drove about a half hour away through the Coachella Valley to Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells and LaQuinta, finally to Indio, the “date capital of the nation” and Shields Date Garden. Had a wonderful lunch in their café and a date shake that was much better than the one we had the other day, then walked their gardens. There’s a brick walk with larger than life statues depicting scenes from the bible. Some of the trees are labeled so we knew what we were looking at. A lot of lemon trees. And many, many date trees with ladders leaning up against them to be climbed to pick the dates. We watched a couple of roadrunners flirting with each other, they’re funny looking birds can move really fast. In front of the garden is a great gift store with every sort of date and date product available for sampling. We knew it was 111 degrees after we got finished walking the walk. Drove a few more miles to Fantasy Springs Resort and Casino, a beautiful resort hotel, where we each got $40 in free play and we both managed to win a bit. Back to LaQuinta we stopped at LaQuinta Brewery for a sampling of their beers. Back to the condo for dinner and in for the night.