Cats On Tour- Jelly Belly & Fresno

Our two week vacation started exactly as planned with a very early start on the Wednesday morning. Unfortunately after Wednesday's car ride any time afterwards that included us driving went south in a hurry. Wednesday was great as we made perfect time with limited stops, and was able to arrive in Fairfield just after four. Hoping to get the Jelly Belly tour out of the way to make for a relaxing Thursday drive was first on the agenda. Using the navigation on the wife's phone which was helpful, and confusing at the same time we finally got to the building, and lucked upon a great parking spot. Going inside we decided our first adventure would be to get the tour itself out of the way. Sadly they don't allow pictures so nothing great to show in the photo department. I will say the daughter thought she had died, and gone to candy heaven seeing all the Jelly Belly's in trays. Just before starting the tour I had gotten an e-mail notification from Brian who runs the blog Base Set Calling. Brian mentioned that we should buy their Belly Flops while at the store. As luck would have it they were running a special of buy three, and get two free. I'm not really sure at this point if I should call it luck or not. Needless to say we gave some away as a thank you to the girl who watched our dog. Yet we still have enough left over that when we finish eating all them I will never want to see another Jelly Belly again.

 
Thursday's drive to Visalia didn't go so well. Watching the news it was mentioned that the freeway between Fairfield, and Stockton would be closed for the day. With the freeway open the trip to Visalia was to be just under four hours. Closed it could be done by backtracking, and going through Sacramento in just under five hours. The wife thinking they would never close down a major section of road during the day convinced me to go down the road towards the closed freeway section. Detour after detour followed before we finally made it to Stockton much later than originally planned. From there we made the drive south towards Visalia. Along the way I convinced the wife to make a stop in Fresno so I could visit the Grizzlies team store, and buy a t-shirt or something. What I got fit into the something category.

I saw the almost empty schedule holder, and asked if I could have one for the collection. These have been something I started to pick up every so often for the hobby room. The baseballs are another side hobby that I have started when I started working on the hobby room. The black, and orange ball has a Fresno Grizzlies logo on it, and glows in the dark. The other ball is an official Pacific Coast League ball. I started collecting balls from the various minor leagues, and someday will actually make a list of the leagues I still need. Finishing off the lot was a new business card from the team store. According to the lady working the store it is the latest card, and they haven't even started using them. While talking to her I asked if they had changed business card designs lately, and she told me about the new card. Not sure how long until they become the teams new design as she let me know that they won't start using them until they run out of the current cards.

Not included in the picture was a brand new hat I bought as well. It's black with the F, and claw marks going through it. Really cool hat that I've been rotating with the Colorado Springs hat my friend brought back from his trip. An interesting note about this stop. The wife commented that it was a shame they were on the road as she would love to watch a game there sometime. It's amazing how our look at this stadium changed from our last visit to this visit. Unfortunately due to the detours we were forced into. I didn't get out to check out the stadium, and take any pictures. Throw in it was burning hot that day, and the wife and daughter were sitting in the car.