Once Upon a River

I haven't done anything in such a long time, vultures were spotted, hoovering over my house. With that in mind, Mommy Nancy and I, made plans to spend yesterday, Sunday, doing something - anything that would get my pedal extremities to jiggling, or better yet, walking. After musing over options for the day, we settled on attending the Courtland Pear Festival (yee ha!) south a Sacramento a ways along the river delta.

So around 1:30 I turned up at Rick & Nancy's & the first order of the day was lunch, which Rick cooked up for us all - batter fried tilapia and pork tacos. *Yum* Honestly, the chatting and the food was so good that it was almost 4:30 by the time Nancy & I were out the door headed for the Fair. I was tickled Nancy drove, so I got to gawk out the window. The drive was lovely & unseasonably cool, on the highway that skirts the Sacramento River. It's another world down there on the Delta.


Driving along the Sacramento River

Hurrah, the Courtland Pear Fair!

Loads of elegant dining

And all you can drink!
Before long, Nancy was enjoying a raspberry pear smoothie and I was eating a forbidden fruit - an ice slushy, with loads of fruit syrups, none of which included Pear. Our primary goal had been to sample the Pear Pie, but you have to get to the fair a lot earlier in the day to enjoy that particular treat. Oh well, we settled on buying some yummy Pear Strudel. We sat enjoying our treats while a Mariachi band banged on in a nearby tent that must have been seating three hundred happy, pear munching fair visitors.


Insert Loud, Cheery, Horn Laiden Music HERE
By the time we finished our treats, the fair was closing down. We decided to continue south along the river, to see what we could see. One of the most frequent sights on the River are bridges, all of which can rise up when necessary for the passage of boats.


Approaching grand river crossing

Over the River & through the woods...
We stopped briefly at the Ryde Hotel - an elegant little Art Deco-ish spot along Sacto's Riviera. I think it would be an interesting place for friends to plan a get together.


Entrance at the Ryde Hotel -all the rage in 1925 and 2011
Next we headed south - only getting ourselves lost once along the way - to the tiny town of Isleton, once known as the “the Little Paris of the Delta". We decided to stroll up the main street, which to me looked lifted from some old Western movie; OK, maybe if you replaced the autos with cowponies.


Main Drag in Isleton
Along the main street were lots of very tiny plots of land overflowing with fruit trees and lush flowers. There even a little garden composed of a high wall of beaver cactus festooned with lush pink roses.


Rather Prickly Flower Arrangement
I was fascinated with the lots with fruit trees, probably planted some time in the early bits of the last century. We found Quince, plums, pears, flowing richly off tree branches. There were also flowers planted everywhere, giving bright punctuation to the street.


Juicy, Fat Peaches

Fuzzy Quince at the rear of one lot
Now, unfortunately, though I photographed loads of the fruit bearing trees, I didn't think to take pictures of the lots themselves; a shame, as they were so romantically reminiscent of small town America.

There was one spot with dozens and dozens of bright and tall sunflowers, some hoovering as high as 7 feet tall. As we admired the bright flowers, a man asked if we would like to take some to take with us? Would we, what a treat!


Towering Sunflowers

We ate peaches straight off the tree
We thanked our benefactor of the sunflowers and headed back to the car, for the drive home. Honestly, with those fresh & humongous sunflowers in hand, Nancy and I felt like we had a starring role in a rather small scale fairy tale. FLORUS HUMONGOUS!