Oranges!

Yesterday we drove to Redlands, California which is about 10 miles from the campground.  We stopped at the Kimberly Crest historical landmark.  It’s a chateau style house built in 1897 and purchased in 1905 by J. Alfred Kimberly, founder of the Kimberly Clark Paper Company. 

Below is the view from the front of the house.  I’ve never seen such tall palm trees.  The tall, skinny pine trees remind me of our trip to Italy.  The house has beautiful Italian gardens and many weddings are held there.

The house caught my attention in the tourist literature because Kimberly Clark has a large operation in Appleton, Wisconsin.  There are tours of the house, but we’ve seen so many old houses over the years so we just enjoyed the outside.

I’ve been surprised to see trees changing colors in California.  I assumed there are mainly palm trees.  This Japanese Maple was in one of the gardens.

Adjacent to the house is a city park with orange groves and rose gardens.  I was excited to see so many orange trees with the added bonus of roses growing right alongside them.  It sure smelled nice.  Who would have guessed we would be enjoying roses in December!

Here is one of the groves in this park right in the middle of the city.  Redlands looked like a very nice city.  There were many old beautifully restored Victorian homes, and the entire city appeared to be clean and well kept.

There were signs saying it was illegal to pick oranges, but I found this one on the ground.  I’m going to wait a few days and taste it.  There was also a tree with tons of these nuts on the ground beneath it.  Does anyone know what they are?

I’d never been to a Trader Joe’s so we checked it out.  I was a bit overwhelmed by all the organic offerings.  I guess I don’t know enough about natural foods to know if it was something I should buy.  I did buy some cranberry oatmeal and a bottle of “Two Buck Chuck” white zinfandel wine.  I have read about this wine on other blogs and wanted to try it out.  I like sweet wine, and it was a bit sour for my taste.  I added some grape juice and that made it better.

We ran a few other errands and headed back home to watch a Redbox movie, Grown-Ups.  It had some very funny parts and great one-liners.  I don’t always care for these types of comedies, but I really enjoyed this one.

There is a very nice newer subdivision next to the campground and we have taken some walks there.  This tree caught my attention.  It has red bark and pink berries.  I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never seen a tree like it before.

 

Another tree had five different colored leaves on it; red, orange, gold, green and brown. Gorgeous!!

 

 

 

We’ve put up some Christmas decorations.  I bought some lights to put in the windows.  We should have probably held on to a few of our Christmas decorations, but we didn’t know what we’d have room for.  Oh well, it’s fun picking out some new things.

 

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!