A day trip to Julian, CA

 

I love the drive from San Diego to Julian, through Ramona.  It was a beautiful December day.  We stopped first at the Julian Mining Company.  This is a fun place for kids.  They have panning for gold and digging for fossils.  We paid $3 each to look around and learn about the gold rush in Julian.

  

                                                the bottle house

We always stop at the Julian Station which has a collection of shops, including a tasting room for Julian Hard Cider.  We load up on hard cider to hold us over for a few weeks.  Our favorite restaurant up there is Jeremy's On the Hill.  The food is consistently great and the atmosphere is very cozy.  I had the bison meat loaf on Yukon potatoes with amazing braised red cabbage.  The cabbage had a nice acidic bite that contrasted with the creamy potatoes and rich meat loaf.  Although the meat loaf is 50% beef, it had a distinctly different bison taste.  Excellent!

Our next stop was Julian Farm and Orchard.  This farm has all sorts of seasonal u-picks.  Picking season was over, but there were lots of fun activities for children.  I wanted to go to the petting zoo.  I petted goats in holiday sweaters, pigs and sheep.  There were chickens in holiday bibs.  In the back pasture, there was a Dexter cow and two donkeys.  The piglets were adorable.

                                                        All donkeys are old souls

All these places are within a three minute drive of each other.  The Julian Station area is before you come to downtown Julian.  There are many more things to do, including a bakery, specialty shops and Mom's Cafe.

On the way back, we stopped at Dudley's for bread and then Trumper's in Ramona for local honey.