This last Christmas Rick bought me tickets to see Brian Regan in Visalia, CA just south of Fresno.
We flew into Fresno on a Wednesday morning. Central CA is a place where much fruit and vegetables are grown. Fifty percent of the nations fruit comes from this area of the nation. I had read on the internet that it was the time for the trees to be in blossom. So after arriving and renting a car we headed that direction. We stopped to get the most delicious sandwich from Quizno's and then found ourselves on the Blossom Trail. It was SO fun to see the orange and lemon trees LOADED with fruit ready to be picked. In fact, we saw migrant workers in an orange orchard picking the fruit BY HAND! It was really cool to talk to them (well Rick talked to them because they spoke Spanish) and to see them work.
The orchards were so beautiful with all of the blossoms!
On our drive we had to stop at a fruit market and by some goods.
We got a couple of oranges and they were juicy and sweet!
We got some other treats that lasted through our couple of days there,
Dried mangos, dried banana chips, fresh almonds, and Rick bought some chili covered dried mango.😧
That evening we drove up to Oakhurst and stayed at the Inelle Hotel.
We found a fun homestyle restaurant down the road from our hotel and the food was SO good!
We stuffed ourselves silly and then the manager came and talked us into getting the fresh apple pie a la mode. You can bet that we finished the WHOLE thing...just the two of us.
We were both in pain! HAHA!
I knew that I was going to be sick if I didn't walk off that food so we stopped at this cute church on a hill in the middle of town. It was so cute! There was a little graveyard connected to it and we walked around the whole area ...twice.
The next morning we stopped at Subway to get a sandwich for a picnic because we were headed to YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK. It took an hour to get to the entrance gate, from Oakhurst, and then another hour to get to the beautiful Yosemite Valley. We came though the mile tunnel and stopped because the view from there was GORGEOUS! We could see El Capitan off to the right, the Half Dome down the middle and Bridal Veil Falls off to the left. It was amazing!
This is the mile long tunnel behind us.
Bridal Veil Falls was our first stop. It was pretty chilly so we bundled up and went on the little hike to get there. It was a sight to see:)
Rick on an old bridge. The area was super pretty!
We stopped at a bridge over the Yosemite creek and enjoyed the view of Yosemite Falls,
After that we stopped for our picnic lunch. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining but we were grateful to have our sweatshirts on.
This crow like bits of Rick's beef jerky but didn't want to have anything to do with my apple.
Go figure.
We then drove up to the Ahwahnee Hotel. It is a historic hotel that was built in the 1930's.
The dining area and solarium had commanding views of Half Dome. There are HUGE fireplaces on either end of the dining room and the smell of smoke lingered in the air.
I loved the vintage feel of this amazing hotel.
This is a view just off the patio. There were people on the patio and on the grass around us just enjoying the sunshine and view.
Here is a view from the backside of the hotel.
Before leaving the hotel and park we stopped at the sweet shop and got a few fun treats...lemon covered almonds and some chocolate bites:)
That evening we drove down to Kingsburg where we stayed at a Fairfield Inn.
The next morning we headed south and east towards Sequoia National Park.
It was about an hour drive again to get to the entrance of the park and the another hour to get to the Giant's Grove.
This sign was just past the entrance.
We stopped at a turnout picnic area for lunch.
We had subway sandwiches again.😋
This guy is so cute!
Here is a view of our drive up into the valley.
We drove up over 5,000 feet. We were way up there!
It was so fun to see these gigantic trees!
I'm a tree hugger!😆
These panorama pictures give an idea of the scope of these trees. They are not the tallest trees in the world but they are the trees with the most volume. That's because the giant girth stays about the same width all the way up the tree.
This is a picture of General Sherman.
It is known as the biggest tree in the world!
That evening we got spiffed up and had a super duper meal at a place called Tahoe Joe's.
It is a steakhouse with traditional steakhouse food.
My goodness though, it was freezing inside!😨
Afterwards, we drove to the historic Fox Theatre in Visalia for the Brian Regan show.
We had some good laughs and enjoyed the show!
The theatre was pretty cool, too!
The next morning was a Saturday and our flight didn't leave until the afternoon so we took a drive down to the town of MacFarland. It is where the movie MacFarland was filmed and Rick really wanted to see it.
We saw the school and the little grocery store that was in the movie. Kinda cool!
We went into the store and bought a treat for the grand kiddos.
A highlight on our way back was to see the halos factory.
We eat those little gems all of the time.
We were desperate to find a Saturday Farmer's Market and google took us to two phantom markets.
We finally found one in Fresno. It's always fun to find a market.
We got a couple of goodies to take on our flight:)
This brings us to the end of our trip. We had a little bit of a glitch at the airport. The bathroom door on our airplane was broken and so our flight was delayed an hour and a half. We knew we weren't going to make our connection so Rick was hustling to figure out what to do. We discussed staying in Fresno, staying in Phoenix and me flying directly to Vegas (because I had to arrive there in Monday morning) but as it worked out we were able to get on a later flight out of Phoenix that got us home that very night.
Good times!!
