We went to the jelly belly factory!! I haven’t been there in years. The kids and I drove down and picked up Peggy, my Mother-in-law, in Stockton and then we headed out on highway 12 towards Fairfield.
Ok. That is a beautiful drive!! I don’t think I’ve ever gone that way in my entire life. I feel like I’ve been missing out! It’s just optimizes Northern California: grassy rolling hills, cows, windmills, rivers. Ok. And the rivers have these sweet drawbridges that go over them. I did not realize that was a thing around here!
When we got to the jelly belly factory itself, we took a moment to snap a couple of pictures and look around and then we went and had lunch at the little café there. No big deal, but my hamburger was shaped like a jellybean. And then we went on the tour which was awesome.
They have recently redone the tour so that it is self-guided, so you can take as long as you want it each section and they have videos and little kiosks all along the way that you can stop and explore the different parts of the factory in the process of making the jellybeans. We took quite a while to watch the entire process, it was really fun to be there with the kids. They just make everything more magical.
Though, it was really quite mesmerizing. Just the repetitive nature of it it’s so fascinating and fun to watch. After we went through the tour, of course we had to avail ourselves of the gift shop 🙂 We bought jelly bellies (as you might expect), fudge, and sour belts. I love sour belts. I ate them quite a bit while I was pregnant with Logan, I just craved them all the time especially in the early days of his pregnancy.
After that we headed back to Stockton and hung out with Peggy and Phil for the evening. It was a very nice day.
