My Town Monday: the National Date Festival in Indio, CA

Feb 13-22, 2009 is the NATIONAL DATE FESTIVAL in Indio, CA (25 miles east of Palm Springs and 130 miles northeast of San Diego). Here's the exact address: Riverside County Fairgrounds, 82-503 Hwy 111, Indio, CA 92201.

There will be carnival rides and games, bands, over 1,000 exhibits, OSTRICH AND CAMEL RACES, a different Arabian Nights themed play every evening and dates galore! It costs $8 for adults, $6 for youths, free for kids under 5 years, $7 for parking. The date festival has been around since 1921.

If I haven't yet convinced you to attend, consider this: the average February temperature is SEVENTY-EIGHT DEGREES FAHRENHEIT




Here's a teeny tiny bit of date trivia: Feel free to disseminate this info at any and all cocktail parties, thus making yourself look wise and brilliant. Date trees are dioecious. This means there are female dates trees (who produce the fruit) and male date trees (who provide the pollen). In your typical date garden, you have one male tree for every FIFTY female trees. Dates take six to seven months to ripen. A date palm tree can live more than 200 years.


I love, love, love dates (but not in milk) and might be able to convince dh to make the date festival a date. Oh, come on, surely you could see this very bad pun coming from a mile away. Anyway, let me know if you're going. We don't want to miss the Blessing of the Dates Ceremony at 9:30 am on the 13th.

And I pinky-promise, no food for next week's My Town Monday post!

Coming up later this week on the blog: my fantabulous evening in Pasadena at the Southern California Independent Booksellers dinner. There will be a photo with me and a famous author. And....we get our date (ha! ha!) in Small Claims Court with The Lying 22 Year Old Female Who Ran A Red Light And Totalled DH's Car

Please trundle over to Travis Erwin's blog. He's our Fearless Leader for My Town Mondays. Along with his own MTM, he'll have a list of participants.

Sources:
http://www.datefest.org/
http://www.palmsprings.com/active/festival/
http://www.datesaregreat.com/index-8.html
http://www.ayushveda.com/dietfitness/benefits-of-dates/