(Photo by Stina Sieg - KJZZ News)

Shangri La Ranch has been a haven for nudists for 55 years. Louann Jacobson and her partner, Tom, have been coming here for years from their home in Gilbert. She says they'll always return.

For this week's "We Are The Valley" series segment, we’re taking a trip just north of Phoenix to a community brought together by one thing – or lack of one thing. Clothing. Shangri La Ranch is a 57-year-old nudist resort.

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and two buddies were playing pool in a packed clubhouse. She had lavender gloves. He had a camo hat. And they were wearing nothing else but smiles and deep tans. Next door, naked folks were dining at the Bare Buns Café.

Outside, others were enjoying the weather, like full-time resident Jimmy Earle, who was riding around the grounds in his golf cart. When you live in the buff, he said, you’ve got nothing to hide behind.

“You only have one thing to sell, and that’s your own personality," Earle said. "And if you’ve got a good personality and you can mingle with people, then you have a great time. If you’ve got a lousy personality – outside, with clothes on – then you’re going to have a lousy personality here.”

Earle, by the way, sports a tattoo of a sun on his abdomen with the words “Play Naked” above it. He’s one of the many people here who think nudism is the great equalizer.

“So, here, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a million dollars in the bank, or two pennies in your pocket – if you had pockets on,” he said. “The people accept you for who you are, which is a whole lot different than the outside world, usually.”

Out by the pool, regular visitor David Wright agreed.

“I’ve met doctors, lawyers, even cruise ship captains and jumbo-jet pilots,” he said.

But status doesn’t matter once people are stripped of the clothing that defines them. Wright and his wife Hazel travel to nudist parks all across the globe and make a point to stop by Shangri La four times a year.

Sure, they could be naked in the privacy of their own home in Australia, but being a nudist “is more to being with people, you know, and sharing and talking,” Wright said. “And, I mean, it’s not being nude. It’s just the freedom.”

It’s not just freedom from clothes. It’s freedom from judgement.

As fellow full-timer Tracy Shaw put it, “Nobody looks at you for your weight.”

She was introduced to nudism by her now-boyfriend, Allen, a few years ago. Back then, she was really hurting from an online relationship that ended with a man rejecting her, saying she was too big. So, she eased into this new lifestyle slowly, with Allen’s help.

“I’d crawl into the hot tub with the sheet around me and he’d turn the bubbles on, and then he could take the sheet away,” she said.

After a while, being naked here felt right. So right that Shaw moved in with her 17-year-old son. Her teen is not a nudist and he’s still emphatic he never wants to see her naked.

“We’ve had a couple of almost run-ins,” Shaw said, laughing. “But he’s been doing good. He doesn’t have any problems with anybody else. And I think it’s really good for his age, because I think that he will grow up and not have unhealthy expectations of what people should look like.”

Jimmy Earle, who happens to be Shaw’s neighbor, knows that being here can change your outlook.

“You know, there’s a saying: When you take off your clothes, all your stress and worries goes with it,” he said. “And when you put on your clothes, all your stress and your worries come back to you.”

Earle has been a full-time resident here for three years. But he started visiting Shangri La a decade before that, when he was living on his own in New Mexico. Earle said he had many of the same amenities there he does now, from a pool and hot tub to an outdoor kitchen.

“But I didn’t have the friends,” he said. “And that’s what makes this place.”

It makes it not just 50 rocky acres in the middle of the desert – but home.