Indio Date Festival &  Riverside County Fair  Feb. 15 -24, 2013 datefest.org

Indio Date Festival  and Riverside County Fair includes Llamas, Dairy Goats, Poultry; Camel & Ostrich Races; WGAS Motorsports Monster Trucks, concerts, contests, games, food, and a carnival with midway action. It's one of the best fairs in California because of its location and "date".  Address: Riverside County Fairgrounds, 82-503 Hwy 111, Indio, CA 92201. Tel: (800) 811-FAIR or (760) 863-8247. datefest.org

INDIO, CALIF.--It's a festival- no, it's a fair. It's both! Known far and wide as the one event in California to celebrate distant lands, the Indio Date Festival is held in honor of the region's top producer, dates. Restaurants drive to the desert to purchase date paste for their shakes served in Greek restaurants, smoothie bars, and old-time California drink & dine shacks.

What's special about this Date Festival event isn't just the fact that it also is the Riverside County Fair (held at the Fairgrounds,) but the entertainment includes blessing of the dates, and award-winning Arabian Nights Musical Pageant each year on the Pageant Stage. An entertaining show that mingles contemporary humor with classic folklore, magic and mystery are at the heart of "Aladdin and the Heart of Agrabah".  And the queen of the fair-- she is Queen Sheherazade and she comes with a Court!

The Date Festival and Fair began in 1921 and developed an international theme that includes annual Camel Races.

In addition to the pageantry, there is plenty of traditional fair celebrating in the California desert. Indio is located in the located in the Colorado Desert 125 miles east of Los Angeles. It is also east of Palm Springs and for anyone who's visited Southern California, you know that the desert regions get smoking hot in the summer. That's why fairs and festivals are held in the spring or late fall & winter.

The Coachella Valley destination of Southern California known for dates, enjoys a huge attendance at the fair event. Beach and mountain dwellers grow weary of the the cold, and head for the desert to get a taste of sunshine and warm shirt sleeve weather during the finest month ever--February. Indio has  over 100 days per year of 100+ degrees Fahrenheit temperatures but in February the average temperature is around 75 degrees.

 

Other Indio festivals include the Coachella Music Festival, usually in April.