The hook
A 1924 date farm in Indio serves a date milkshake that tastes like caramel and, in its own little theater, screens a film called "The Romance and Sex Life of the Date."
01Why it's worth it
The Coachella Valley grows most of the country's dates, and Shields has been at it since 1924, when Floyd and Bess Shields came to the desert to farm them. Floyd, to educate his customers, made a lecture and slideshow about how dates are grown, which involves hand-pollinating the palms, and gave it the deadpan title "The Romance and Sex Life of the Date." It's tamer than it sounds, fifteen minutes on horticulture, and it still plays on a loop in the on-site Romance Theater, which is exactly the kind of earnest midcentury roadside strangeness the atlas is for. You come for that, for a date shake at the soda fountain, and for a wander out back through the date grove, which happens to be lined with twenty-three life-size statues of Jesus.
02How to experience it
It's on Highway 111 in Indio, about eight hours from the Bay and twenty-five minutes east of Palm Springs. Free to visit; get a date shake, watch the film, walk the grove. It's a quick, cheerful stop on a Coachella Valley day.