Day 19 – Wednesday March 24, traveled 0 miles tonight at Caruthers

Today Dennis and I went to visit Kent at the old Manna Pro testing lab in Fresno. A long time since I saw him and his sidekick Judy, a nice visit. They haven’t aged a bit since 1995.
As we stood on the loading dock by the lab, I look behind Kent – there are a pile of Hubbard Feeds Crystalyx half barrels – my old cmpany. Manna Pro apparently bought it from Hubbard and the farmer returned the barrels and they will stand there till the place is demolished.

We met up with the gals after a couple wrong turns. We stopped at the Sunkist Raisin Company wrote and gift shop. They had free samples of the small pack of raisins along with some chocolate covered ones. A cute shop to stop at. The video they put on for us talked about the 200,000 acres of grapes that are grown for them. The harvest and drying was eye-opening. Matting is placed between the rows of grape vines and the grapes picked off the vine and placed on the matting to dry for up to 3 weeks in September. This month is when they have a chance for rain and if they do watch for mold but at least they can turn them to dry. When they say sundried raisins, they mean it.

All through the valley there are field after field of grape vines and many fields of fruit trees, not identified. In the afternoon we sat around and did nothing.

We are headed to Royal and Ancient Grill, dinner tonight. It is a small restaurant, holds maybe 20. Owned by a mother and son. Its menu changes monthly and noon lunches are available. When they build in this community they have to have it approved by the city and it has to have some Swedish accent to it. This town, Kingsburg, is building up there reputation with there heritage. They point to St. George’s golf club as their Swedish accent?? Oh yes, a bottle of Sunfire Cab 2006, added so you don’t by this one. But she gave us a taste of a Sunfire Tempranillo 2006 was just great.

Shirleen and Dennis ordered the rib eye, Diane the Orange Ruffy with shrimp, I the New York Strip. All were prepared just right and the flavor was intense. All had a baked potato and veggies.

Day 20 Thursday

The next morning we joined Diane to attend the meeting of the California Garden Club district meeting.

The drive to Three Rivers was through some normally brown areas, but because we were coming they had plenty of rain to show off the lush green hillside with its gigantic rocks showing through the hillside also. There were about 35 people and three men. The society which was putting it on today was the Redbud Garden Club. The presentation was by a botanist from Sequoia National Park. Her presentation was an introduction to the 6,000 wild flowers of California. She wanted the groups to think about growing home state flowers in their yards. The locals furnished the lunch, they had five soups – I tried two of them, tortilla and a bean variety. With it was a delicious lettuce, walnut, apple salad. We had many choices for dressings. This group had a band of Garden Watchers who looked after the 5 gardens they planted in the town. We were able to tour 3 of them and must have blown by the other two.

After the meeting we went up to the 6,400 foot level and saw the great stand of the Sequoia’s. Again many curves and this old man is getting wore out. We went higher and higher, it is fun many corners were so slow that 10 MPH was top speed. Many times the front scrapped along the pavement. Then we make a corner and here is a little snow, then ore snow then the landscape is covered by snow and we get glimpses of the big trees. Why do they grow here and not at lower levels, God only knows. On some of the large sequoia’s there are scars of fires from long times ago. We now head back down the trail, turn after turn.

Now the real reason for the drive today – to find The See’s Candy store. On the way from the Sequoia’s we found a store in Visalia CA.

You walk in and your are quickly greeted to See’s by the counter people. Once in line they give you a complimentary candy. We picked up a dark chocolate walnut piece, I a pineapple nugget centered dark chocolate and a dark chocolate truffle, TASTY!


We drove over the mountain and found a place to stay. It turned out we were still 65 miles from Nixon’s museum. We ate at a Outback, it was close and we walked to it. Didn’t need much food so Shirleen got their Onion soup, we split a Blooming Onion and I there mild chicken wings. jerr