Sequoia National Park- John Muir Lodge- Fairfield- Jelly Belly Factory- San Francisco

July 16, 2014

 

 

Sequoia National Park- John Muir Lodge- Fairfield- Jelly Belly Factory- San Francisco

 

This morning, Ethan was up around 7:00am.  He is always my early bird!  I heard him get up and I really wanted to get up early to go do some wildlife watching.  So Ethan and I quietly got dressed and left the room to go down to a meadow near the lodge.  We were about 25 yards from the lodge on a path and practically walked right into this little doe!  She just looked at us and went back to eating the huckleberry bush!  Ethan and I were so surprised!  We decided to go back to the room to wake up Logan because we knew he would LOVE to see all the wild life.

 

 

Some pictures of the Lodge.

 

 

We stopped at a little coffee stand and got some hot tea and muffins.  Then we headed down to the meadow.  And we sat for about an hour and saw ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

 

 

We headed back to the room to pack up and head out of Sequoia/Kings Canyon.  I really loved the lodge and surrounding Grant Grove.  I wish we could have stayed another night or two!  But we checked out and headed over to the Visitor Center so the boys could turn in their Junior Ranger Books and get sworn in as Junior Rangers.

 

 

We drove out of the North Entrance of Kings Canyon and headed through Fresno and west to Fairfield, CA.  We had plans to meet up with Chris's Aunt Cathy for dinner.  We arrived at about 3:00 and went to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield.

While we were waiting for the tour to start, the kids got in line for some samples.  They had a whole line of "gross" jelly beans.  Ethan got a sample of Barf Jelly Beans!  He ate it and ALMOST barfed!  The Jelly Belly's actually smelled and tasted like barf!  GROSS!!! 

The tour was really neat.  It took us all through the factory and we learned all about how they make Jelly Bellies, and how they package and ship them.  They had a whole room dedicated to Ronald Reagan and talked about how he made Jelly Bellies so popular.  It was pretty interesting.

 

They had some really cool pictures- all made out of Jelly Beans.

 

These are some Harry Potter themed Jelly Bellies- "Bertie Botts Beans" and "Chocolate Frogs" from the books/movies.  Ryan is really into Harry Potter right now so he was really excited!

 

After the tour, we met up with Chris's Aunt Cathy, cousin Carol and her husband & baby.  We ate dinner at Red Robin and then went back to Carol's house to visit with them and see their new puppy.  We had a great visit and the kids played out in the back yard.  After a while, we left and finished the drive into San Francisco.  We came across and down from the north, so we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco in the dark, in the rain!  It was cool to see it all light up for our first glimpse! I tried to take some pictures but they didn't turn out very well at all.  Here is one- you can barely see the outline of the bridge. 

 

We arrived at our hotel at about 10:00pm.  We stayed at the Columbus Motor Inn. We had a hard time parking in the parking garage as the spaces are so tiny.  We unloaded and settled into our room for the night.