We had been to Indian Wells over 10 years ago for this tennis tournament. We were just blown away by all the changes to the facility. We thought the new addition of the outside viewing area was just great!
We bought tickets for Stadium One for the day and also the night session so we could, one more time, see Roger Federer in person. Stadium One was sparsely filled for the Halep ladies singles match. But then it was time for Roger's Match and it filled up quickly!
Roger did not disappoint winning in two sets!!
The new scoreboards are phenomenal.
Then it was off to Stadium two for three matches: Sam Querry in singles, John Isner and Jack Sock in doubles and the Bryan Brothers in doubles.
We saw Sam win a great match over Feliciano Lopez. John Isner and Jack Sock also won their doubles match and, in the finals, won the Men's doubles trophy!! We watched the Bryan Brothers back in Stadium One in some great lower level seats.
Most memorable moment wasn't the outstanding tennis. No, it was Bob Bryan's adorable kids on the court after they won. Usually the winner signs four balls and hits them into the stands. The Bryan Brothers were so thrilled to play and win on Stadium Court that they took the Penn can that held every can of balls used on Stadium court that day. Bob signed every ball and Mike and Bob's kids sent them into the stands. Bob's 4 year old son threw them - quite amazing the arm on this four year old. His six year old daughter used her Dad's racquet and hit balls into the stand. It was beyond incredible and adorable!!
Not far away was yet another National Park - Joshua Tree National Park!!
Much to our surprise there was a whole area of the park called Cholla Gardens. We are used to lots of jumping Cholla in Arizona. But there were just thousands of these and they were huge!!
Joshua Tree is known for more than trees. They have some amazingly unique rock formation called Jumbles.
And then there are the beautiful Joshua Trees.
How could we not stop at the famous Shield's Date Farm!!
We watched a fascinating video on the process of farming dates. There are male and female palm trees. They collect the pollen from a male tree and take it and dust the female tree. All of the dates are hand picked!! Yes they grow like this on the Palm Tree!!
They don't do a tour of the date farm but they do have loads of trees on property.
We couldn't leave without a sampling of these delicious stuffed dates.
We made one more stop worth mentioning - Pete Carlson's Golf and Tennis shop. We found some interesting deals. I bought a dozen Volvik vivid balls for $25!! It is a huge shop and just fun to roam around!
It's time for the next stop: San Dimas, CA
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