4 Best Sights in Visalia, The Central Valley

Taste, touch, and feel your way through orange and mandarin groves on a guided tour of this 180-acre working citrus farm. Tours last 60 minutes; tractor-pulled wagon tours are also available, as are more expensive walking tours. Kids and adults love the challenge of navigating the nation's only orange-grove maze, answering questions at a series of checkpoints to earn a prize at the end. You must book tours in advance online.

For one-stop truck-stop entertainment, pull off the highway in Traver, where at Bravo Farms you can try your luck at an arcade shooting gallery, watch cheese being made, munch on barbecue and ice cream, play a round of minigolf, peruse funky antiques, buy produce, visit a petting zoo, and climb a multistory tree house. Taste a few "squeekers" (fresh cheese curds, so named because chewing them makes your teeth squeak), and then be on your way.

Trails at this 344-acre wildlife sanctuary off the main road to Sequoia National Park lead past majestic valley oak, sycamore, cottonwood, and willow trees. Among the 134 bird species you might spot are hawks, hummingbirds, and great blue herons. Bobcats, lizards, coyotes, and cottontails also live here. The Sycamore Trail has digital signage with QR codes you can scan with your smartphone to access plant and animal information.

Amid shady oaks you can picnic alongside duck ponds, rent a boat and tool around the lagoon, and view a bronze replica of James Earl Fraser's iconic End of the Trail sculpture, which depicts a Native American warrior on horseback. The indoor-outdoor Tulare County Museum contains several re-created environments from the pioneer era, displays of Yokuts tribal artifacts (basketry, arrowheads, clamshell-necklace currency), and exhibits that chronicle farm history and labor.