Getaway to Paradise (well, Chico & Paradise)

This past weekend, we traveled to Butte County for Ann-Chi and Anthony's wedding in Chico (another [!] wedding post forthcoming); this county includes the cute towns of Chico and (yes, there really is a town by this name!) Paradise, which are about four hours (east and south) from Arcata.  While it seems that we have been to almost every corner of California at one time or another, we had never stopped in to visit this county, which is partway between Sacramento and Redding.

On Saturday, we checked out Butte Creek Canyon, or the "little Grand Canyon" between the two towns.  We stopped by the Honey Run Covered Bridge, built in 1894, which is the only three-level covered bridge in the country.

 

We stopped for some peacocks who crossed our way on Honey Run Road....

Once in the actual town of Paradise, we visited Noble Orchards, a family-run business selling (17 varieties of) apples since 1921. Although it wasn't an orchard where we couldn't pick our own apples, we sampled several different varieties and came away with some yummy apple products.

I loved this cutting board!

Bille Park in Paradise was a great place to walk Pep and had some nice canyon views.

On Ann-Chi and Anthony's recommendation, we also tried locally made ice cream at Shubert's in Chico (it was definitely warm enough to enjoy ice cream, a nice sunny "break" [from Humboldt Co weather] for us!); however, we still prefer the delicious ice cream of our local Arcata Scoop.

On Sunday, we checked out Bidwell Park in Chico which, at around 3,600 acres in area, is the third largest urban park in the U.S. It stretched for MILES!

In addition to its millions of trails, it had a very large swimming pool for use in the (hot!!) summer months.

While neither K nor I are beer drinkers, we did also stop at Chico's Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., one of America's first microbreweries (and maker of an award-winning Pale Ale), to do a short self-tour.

We did some quick shopping in Redding (Kelvin found a great snowboard deal and ooooh how we love Trader Joe's!) before returning home. Two thumbs up for Butte County!