The Central Valley
We’ve compiled the best of the best in The Central Valley - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
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47 Recommendations
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1. Acquiesce Winery
Expect no heavy reds at this boutique operation specializing in Rhône-style whites. Owner-winemaker Susan Tipton, who sourced her grapes' vines from Château de Beaucastel in France's Châteauneuf du Pape appellation, produces Viognier, Roussanne, and Grenache Blanc but also spotlights lower-profile varietals like Bourboulenc and Clairette Blanche. (There's also a Grenache rosé.) Tastings, by appointment only, take place in a 100-year-old barn or just outside it, in either case with vineyard views.
22353 N. Tretheway Rd., Acampo, California, 95220, USA209-333–6102Sight Details
Rate Includes: Tastings from $20, Closed Mon.–Wed. -
2. Bokisch Vineyards
This operation 11 miles east of downtown comes highly recommended for its excellent Spanish varietals and warm hospitality. The Albariño white and Tempranillo and Graciano reds often receive favorable critical notice, but everything is well made, including the non-Spanish Petit Verdot and old-vine Carignane. Bokisch welcomes picnickers; pick up fixings in town, and enjoy vineyard views while you dine.
18921 Atkins Rd., Lodi, California, 95420, USA209-642–8880Sight Details
Rate Includes: Tastings from $15 -
3. California Living Museum
Zoo/AquariumAt this combination zoo, botanical garden, and natural history museum, the emphasis is on the zoo. Within the reptile house lives every species of rattlesnake found in California. The landscaped grounds—about a 20-minute drive northeast of Bakersfield—also shelter captive bald eagles, tortoises, coyotes, black bears, and foxes. Additions in 2015 include a touch tank and jellyfish exhibit, a zip line, and a high ropes challenge course.
10500 Alfred Harrell Hwy., Hwy. 178 east to Harrell Hwy. north, Bakersfield, California, 93306, USA661-872–2256Sight Details
Rate Includes: $9 -
4. Castle Air Museum
Museum/GalleryYou can stroll among dozens of restored military aircraft at this outdoor facility. The vintage war birds include the B-25 Mitchell medium-range bomber—best known for the Jimmy Doolittle raid on Tokyo after the attack on Pearl Harbor—and the speedy SR-71 Blackbird, used for reconnaissance over Vietnam and Libya. A recently arrived star is an aircraft that from 1974 to 2006 was known as Air Force One whenever it transported the U.S president.
Castle Airport, 5050 Santa Fe Dr., 6 miles north of Merced, Buhach Rd. exit off Hwy. 99, Atwater, California, 95301, USA209-723–2178Sight Details
Rate Includes: $10 -
5. Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park
It's worth the slight detour off Highway 99 to learn about and pay homage to the dream of Allen Allensworth and other Black pioneers who, in 1908, founded Allensworth, the only California town settled, governed, and financed by African Americans. At its height, the town prospered as a key railroad transfer point, but after cars and trucks reduced railroad traffic and water was diverted for Central Valley agriculture, the town declined and was eventually deserted. Today, the restored and rebuilt schoolhouse, library, and other structures commemorate Allensworth's heyday, as do festivities that take place each October.
4129 Palmer Ave., Allensworth, California, 93219, USA661-849–3433Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free -
Recommended Fodor’s Video
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6. Farmer Bob's World
Taste, touch, and feel your way through orange and mandarin groves on a guided tour of this 180-acre working citrus farm. Tours last 60 minutes; tractor-pulled wagon tours are also available, as are more expensive walking tours. Kids and adults love the challenge of navigating the nation's only orange-grove maze, answering questions at a series of checkpoints to earn a prize at the end. You must book tours in advance online.
32985 Rd. 164, Ivanhoe, California, 93235, USA559-798–0557Sight Details
Rate Includes: Farm Tour $15; Tractor Tour $15; Walking Tour $100 for up to 2 persons, $10 for each additional person, Closed Sun.--Tues., Tour reservations required -
7. Forestiere Underground Gardens
Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere spent four decades (1906–46) carving out an odd, subterranean realm of rooms, tunnels, grottoes, alcoves, and arched passageways that once extended for more than 10 acres between Highway 99 and busy, mall-pocked Shaw Avenue. Though not an engineer, Forestiere called on his memories of the ancient Roman structures he saw as a youth and on techniques he learned digging subways in New York and Boston. Only a fraction of his prodigious output is on view, but you can tour his underground living quarters, including bedrooms (one with a fireplace), the kitchen, living room, and bath, as well as a fishpond and auto tunnel. Skylights allow exotic full-grown fruit trees to flourish more than 20 feet belowground.
5021 W. Shaw Ave., Fresno, California, 93722, USA559-271–0734Sight Details
Rate Includes: $23, Closed Dec.–Mar. Closed Tues. and Wed. in fall and early spring -
8. Kern County Museum and Lori Brock Children's Discovery Center
Museum/GalleryThis 16-acre site is one of the Central Valley's top museum complexes. The indoor-outdoor Kern County Museum is an open-air, walk-through historic village with more than 55 restored or re-created buildings dating from the 1860s to the 1940s. "Black Gold: The Oil Experience," a permanent exhibit, shows how oil is created, discovered, extracted, and transformed for various uses. The Lori Brock Children's Discovery Center, for ages eight and younger, has hands-on displays and an indoor playground.
3801 Chester Ave., at 38th St., Bakersfield, California, 93301, USA661-437–3330Sight Details
Rate Includes: $10 -
9. Kern Valley Museum
Museum/GalleryA cadre of sweet, well-informed volunteers runs this jam-packed throwback of a museum that's bigger than it looks from the outside. With exhibits about Lake Isabella, minerals and gems, old tools and farming implements, pioneer and native life, and Hollywood Westerns shot in the area, you’ll likely find something to intrigue you.
49 Big Blue Rd., off Kernville Rd., Kernville, California, 93238, USA760-376–6683Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free -
10. Lucas Winery
David Lucas was one of the first local producers to start making serious wine, and today the Zinfandels he and his wife, Heather Pyle-Lucas, make are among Lodi's most sought-after vintages. The Lucases, who previously worked at the Robert Mondavi Winery (she also made wine at Opus One), also craft a Chardonnay with subtle oak flavors and a Zinfandel rosé. Tastings, by appointment, often take place on a patio with a vineyard view.
18196 N. Davis Rd., Lodi, California, 95242, USA209-368–2006Sight Details
Rate Includes: Tastings from $20, Closed Mon.–Wed. -
11. M2 Wines
With its translucent polycarbonate panels, concrete floor, and metal framing, this winery's high-ceilinged tasting room strikes an iconoclastic, industrial-sleek pose in rural Lodi. The Soucie Vineyard old-vine Zinfandel and the Trio and Duality red blends are three to seek out, but all the wines here are good.
2900 E. Peltier Rd., Acampo, California, 95220, USA209-339–1071Sight Details
Rate Includes: Tastings from $20 -
12. Berghold Vineyards & Winery
The appointment-only tasting room at Berghold recalls an earlier wine era with its vintage Victorian interior, including restored, salvaged mantlepieces, leaded glass, and a 26-foot-long bar. The wines—among them Viognier, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Zinfandel—pay homage to French wine-making styles.
17343 Cherry Rd., Lodi, California, 95240, USA209-333–9291Sight Details
Rate Includes: Tastings $15, Closed Mon.–Wed. -
13. Blossom Trail
Scenic DriveThe 62-mile self-guided Blossom Trail driving tour takes in Fresno-area orchards, citrus groves, and vineyards during spring blossom season. The trail passes through small towns and past rivers, lakes, and canals. The most colorful and aromatic time to go is from late February to mid-March, when almond, plum, apple, apricot, and peach blossoms shower the landscape with shades of white, pink, and red. After the blossoms mature, the route is known as the Fruit Trail.
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14. Blue Diamond Growers Store
Store/MallYou can witness the everyday abundance of the Modesto area with a visit here; on offer are tasty samples, a film about almond growing, and many roasts and flavors of almonds, as well as other nuts.
4800 Sisk Rd., at Kiernan Ave., off Hwy. 99, Modesto, California, 95356, USA209-545–6230 -
15. Bravo Farms
For one-stop truck-stop entertainment, pull off the highway in Traver, where at Bravo Farms you can try your luck at an arcade shooting gallery, watch cheese being made, munch on barbecue and ice cream, play a round of minigolf, peruse funky antiques, buy produce, visit a petting zoo, and climb a multistory tree house. Taste a few "squeekers" (fresh cheese curds, so named because chewing them makes your teeth squeak), and then be on your way.
36005 Hwy. 99, Traver, California, 93673, USA559-897–5762Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free -
16. China Alley
Historic District/SiteWorth a brief look if you're in town—for the photo op, if nothing else—this frozen-in-time street holds the last remains of Hanford's once-bustling Chinatown. The centerpiece is the 1893 Taoist Temple. The alley's other buildings of note include the decaying L.T. Sue Herb building.
Temple, 12 China Alley, off N. Green St., Hanford, California, 93230, USA -
17. Fresno Art Museum
The museum's key permanent collections include pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art, Andean pre-Columbian textiles and artifacts, Japanese prints, Berkeley School abstract expressionist paintings, and contemporary sculpture. Temporary exhibits include important traveling shows.
2233 N. 1st St., Fresno, California, 93703, USA559-441–4221Sight Details
Rate Includes: $10, Closed Mon.–Wed. -
18. Fresno Chaffee Zoo
Zoo/AquariumThe zoo's most striking exhibit is its tropical rain forest, where you'll encounter exotic birds along paths and bridges. Elsewhere at the zoo live tigers, sloth bears, sea lions, tule elk, camels, elephants, and siamang apes. The facility has a high-tech reptile house and there's a petting zoo.
Roeding Park, 894 W. Belmont Ave., east of Hwy. 99, Fresno, California, 93728, USA559-498–5910Sight Details
Rate Includes: $7 -
19. Haggin Museum
Museum/GalleryIn pretty Victory Park, the Haggin has one of the Central Valley's finest art collections. Highlights include landscapes by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, a still life by Paul Gauguin, a Native American gallery, and an Egyptian mummy.
1201 N. Pershing Ave., at Rose St., Stockton, California, 95203, USA209-940–6300Sight Details
Rate Includes: $8, free 1st Sat. of month -
20. Hanford Carnegie Museum
Museum/GalleryFashions, furnishings, toys, and military artifacts at this living-history museum tell the region's story. The facility is inside the former Carnegie Library, a Romanesque-style building dating from 1905.
108 E. 8th St., at N. Douty St., Hanford, California, 93230, USA559-584–1367Sight Details
Rate Includes: $3
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