Sacramento and Merced

We left San Diego after three days, flying into Sacramento where we picked up a rental car. No more cabs... we had a drive ahead of us, going to Yosemite National Park.  We never did adjust to California time.... waking up at 5:00 or 6:00 every morning.  It always felt like we were two or three hours ahead of everyone around us.

Another Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives restaurant was near Sacramento--- "Giusti's."  Tiny little place on a boat canal in an even tinier town called Walnut Grove.  Without a map, you wouldn't even know the place was there, but the crowds inside were mostly local residents who seemed to know just about everyone in the place.  Hundreds of baseball-style caps line the ceiling over the front room of the restaurant, and the daily menu is written on white-boards hanging on all of the walls.

We got to Giusti's on Mother's Day.... my husband had called ahead to make reservations, telling the owner that we were coming right from the airport and could they possibly squeeze us in on such a busy day?  They could, and they did.  Busy, busy, busy place........... not the fanciest of restaurants (definitely in the "Dive" category) but the food was good, the service was better, and we ate there twice..... the first time after landing in Sacramento, and the second time during the drive back to the airport after Yosemite.

The town of Merced was between Sacramento and Yosemite.  They call Merced "The Gateway to Yosemite" and the main part of the town has small shops and cafes and stores.  We didn't stop there in the center of Merced, but we did stop for home made ice cream at a really nice fruit market on the outskirts of the town.  Lots of tour buses there, but the staff at the market didn't seem flustered or overwhelmed by 48 bus riders walking into their store at the same time.

The fruit market also sold pistachio nuts..... there were pistachio trees growing on acres and acres of land between Sacramento and Yosemite.  Now you would think the nuts in that market would have been a great price, being that they're picked within a mile or two of the store, but the prices were off the charts. (As were all the prices of everything in that state, from nuts to gas, from soda to a slice of apple pie.)

When we were in California, we heard the news about the enormous amount of the state's deficit.  They could make an awful lot of money selling pistachio nuts, if only they'd lower the darn prices.