One of my favorite parts about choosing to visit arbitrary destinations spontaneously are all the little unexpected things I discover along the way.

On the way home from Sequoia National Park last Monday we drove through the aptly named town of Lemon Cove, and found ourselves surrounded by rows upon rows of navel orange and lemon trees. I kind of forget that California is a major citrus producer, and that we’d actually traveled south getting to Sequoia.

The trees came right up to the road and were ripe with fruit. I wanted to stop the car and pick oranges right there, but instead we stopped at a fruit stand up the road and bought a dozen navel oranges for $2. Further down the road I passed a sign for lemons, turned around, and followed the sign to a table on someone’s driveway with two tubs of big lemons, a jar with a slit in the top, and a sign that read “12 lemons $1”. Oh man they smelled good.