Your Road Trips Gardener is a Heartlander, so she’s never seen almond trees in bloom. But, wow! They rival cherry trees in splendor.

If you’re driving around Northern California this weekend, swing by the 98th annual Almond Festival, a celebration in five towns in the Esparto/Capay Valley Region: Esparto (map), Capay, Brooks, Guinda and Rumsey.

It takes place tomorrow (February 24, 2013), with events scheduled from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The almond blossoms begin to flower in February and continue through March. If you can’t get there for the festival, download the Blossom Trail map and wander on your own.

The Capay Valley Almond Festival began in 1915. California is the only place in North America that grows almonds commercially. A $2 billion industry, more than 6,000 growers devote an estimated 530,000 acres in the Central Valley to almonds — California’s largest tree nut crop — in a stretch of land extending from below Bakersfield in the south to Red Bluff in the north.

For more information about almonds and recipes go online.

(Photo by Ekaterina Boym-Medler)