As the Beverly Hillbillies said, California is the place I oughta be. These tasty organic berries screamed buy me when we were last in California. Farmers’ markets alone should drag us the 350 miles west to live in the Golden State, but there are also Ramen shops, ethnic shopping areas, films that only show in New York and California, beaches, boba tea, Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios, San Francisco just up the road, Redwoods, museums galore, organic handmade cheeses, the Monterey Aquarium, Highway 1, real Chinese food, Death Valley and so much more. More, such as traffic, lots of traffic, rents requiring slavery to your dwelling, big fires, and earthquakes, but where else are you going to find imagawayaki, Little India, a Vietnamese shopping mall, body surfing, yellow raspberries in April, and Japanese gardens all in one day?

On the road trip back to Phoenix, Arizona, my mother-in-law and I stopped on old Route 66 in Glendora to try Donut Man’s donuts. I had recently read about Jim Nakano, the owner of the shop and the inventor of the fresh strawberry and fresh peach donuts, and was hoping against the season that just maybe the strawberry donut was in production. Unfortunately, the cold snap delayed the berries, and I’ll have to wait until our next visit to Southern California to try these famous concoctions. Until then, we satisfied our sweet tooths with a mixed assortment, leaving a few for Caroline to sample after we got home.