To experience the magic of candy making, visit the Cerreta Candy Company. This family-owned business has been making delicious treats for over 50 years. They offer public tours of their factory, where you can watch as vats of chocolate are poured into delicate molds to create mouth-watering candies. You'll be able to hear the popcorn popping before it gets coated in luscious caramel. The Cerreta family has passed down their candy-making skills for four generations, and they continue to oversee production and operations. You can watch them make a variety of caramels, fudge, brittle's, Camelback's, and caramel popcorn. They combine modern and old-fashioned candy-making techniques to create popular chocolate-covered creams such as butter, maple, fudge, or peppermint. They specialize in molded chocolates like the famous French Mint and the Chocolate Enrober, where creams, caramels, pretzels, cherries, and marshmallows get covered in luscious chocolate.
Spooktacular Hot Air Balloon Festival is going to be amazing this year. Funergy will present nightly costume contests, and everyone is welcome to participate. Show off your best costume and win a prize. Over 20 hot air balloons from around the country will be at the festival, and each will be a trick-or-treat station. That means you'll be able to get candy and treats all night long. They even have over 4,000 pounds of candy ready for the kids. If that wasn't enough, Rainbow Ryders Hot Air Balloon Ride Co. offers hot air balloon rides for the whole family. What a fantastic way to see everything from above.
Find your green-thumb inspiration in the garden's Berlin Agave Yucca Forest or the Desert Wildflower Loop Trail at the Desert Botanical Garden, a naturalist's dream where they showcase more than 145 acres of stunning desert blooms, flora, and fauna year-round. The site opened in 1939 and now boasts over 21,000 plants, including outdoor exhibits and displays, specialty greenhouses, and endangered and fragile species preservation. One-third of the plants are native to the area, while the remaining plants come from all over the world, including special collections from Australia and Baja California. Ecosystems represented include mesquite bosque, semidesert grassland, and upland chaparral scrub.