Dinosaur town is a fun little park and gathering spot in the town of Granger. The area sits on a…read morenice little area with a pond, an amphitheater and a couple playgrounds with lots of dinosaurs to climb on and around. A couple slides and swings, as well as a concessions area with some tables complete this unique play spot about a mile from the freeway. This place gets an extra star because they add on to it just about every year! The main playground near the concession stand and the amphitheater has some great dinos to climb on as well as the swings and slides. The second area across the street has more dinos, an smaller sandy area for little kiddos and the creme de la creme...the T-Rex statue! This one is a bit big to climb on, but it's great for pictures. As stated, they add to the park each year. I'm or sure which was the most recent addition, but one on a small island situated in the middle of the lake seems to be one of the newer models. It's a short walk around the lake to the little peninsula and there's some nice area to sit once you're there. They host movie night here and it's a place they obviously take some pride in. Worth a stop if you're passing by and need to let the kids run around a bit, plus it's fun to climb in dinosaurs!

Lots of dinosaurs here. My goodness. So many dinosaurs. If you wanna see dinosaurs, this is the…read moreplace to go.

You are driving down I-82, in a very "different" Washington state than the one in which one Seattle…read moreis located, and you see a sign. It says "Welcome to Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington" in various tacky fonts and colors. Instead of evergreens and gray skies, you are surrounded by sparsely vegetated hills strewn with sagebrush and the sun may be beating down on you or your dashboard ... and you begin to process the following: One star for the effort to erect this billboard. Another star for latching onto a calling card of sorts although, at 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time on December 16, 2016, it is 12 degrees Fahrenheit in Yakima WA ... and 59 degrees Fahrenheit in Palm Springs CA. Another star for making you laugh, causing you to shake your head, and/or waking you up. The "Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington" sign, albeit a stretch, is A-o.k.! It may not change the course of your life, but you probably won't forget it.

Surely the Rat Pack took trips to Yakima, WA. That's the only way someone could have come up with…read morethe connection: Yakima = Palm Springs. Regardless, Yakima is its own beast. It's located just below the Cascades and just downriver from the beautiful Yakima River Canyon. It is centrally located in the rectangle we lovingly call Washington. For me, Yakima (aka "Crackima") is a nice place to take a break if you're coming home from hiking. It's a small town with Palm Springs aspirations (is this really a good thing??).

The Teapot Dome Service Station I either got from Atlas Obscura or a book called Weird Washington…read morebut I can't entirely be sure but this place has been on my bookmark list forever and finally got to go to it while on vacation. It's Yelp classification of Local Flavor fits the bill precisely! Historical and unusual this tea pot dome service station was actually a functioning one at one point in time and the building has been kept up and maintained perfectly so it looks quite pristine! Antique gas pumps are nearby to admire, a pic nic table and a memorial nearby. Admission is free and the day I was here I visited with a very congenial gentleman about the nearby area and took some info home about the building and the area. Definitely a cute place to stop! The attraction isn't anything that would be too terribly time consuming to stop at and a good place to stretch your legs and enjoy a service station of the past.

For anyone who appreciates history, architecture, scandal and the Venn diagram where all of them…read moreoverlap, the historic Teapot Dome service station in Zillah, Washington is for you! Located on the main drag in downtown Zillah, this iconic structure is both hard to miss and a poignant reminder that if you are an elected official and do something dumb, it will probably be memorialized forever... Perhaps in the form of an old gas station! For those who are unfamiliar with the teapot dome scandal (like I was until about three minutes ago) - here is a link to a Wikipedia article that will give you some background. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal In a nutshell, the presidency of Warren G. Harding was rocked by some illegal activity where leases to drill for oil were granted inappropriately. One such place was in teapot dome, Wyoming... Hence the name. Wouldn't you know, those rascals in Zillah, Washington were on the ball and constructed this novelty gas station as a reminder of the past and to give your kids something fun to look at when you would stop for gas. Unfortunately, this place doesn't have active pumps anymore, but they do use it as a welcome center for the community. There's a nice little parking lot out front, some restrooms if you need to stop, and plenty of opportunity for a picture that will remind you of those clever people down in Zillah! Also, I can imagine architects may appreciate all that goes into a place like this. At present, I don't have a good enough appreciation for the complexities of architecture to know whether not this place is a masterpiece or a piece of crap. Either way, it looks like something out of a nursery rhyme and is unique in the service stations that I have ever been privy to. If you're going through the area, it's worth taking a three minute detour to go see this place!

Dozer days is an amazing two day event that comes along once a year in the spring time! We saw an…read moreadvertisement for it in a magazine about six months ago and we're so excited about it that we marked it on our calendars. This is basically every little boys dream, and also has a big appeal for little girls! A ton of very generous people from the community come together with an opportunity for kids to sit front and center and help drive heavy machinery. In addition, there are tons of fire trucks, ambulances, police boats, garbage trucks and work trucks the kids are able to climb on, get in and honk horn's in! It's probably the coolest thing our little dudes have ever done! Admission was something like $10-13 and it was worth twice that! It runs from 11-4 and there are plenty of food trucks there with food and beverage for your purchasing pleasure! I wish there was something like this a couple times per year. It was a blast, the kids loved it and we wished we got turns in the machines by the end of the day!

What a wonderful time of year when we gather as a community along the main road in the area and…read morewatch a myriad of vehicles and people Don their Christmas lights! Aside from it being incredibly cold, this is a very pleasant experience. The official parade time was 530 to 7, but The festivities start at around six. The whole thing lasted about 45 minutes and was a nice parade of local businesses, trucks and farm equipment it all lit up! Word to the wise, get down to one of the businesses on Yakima Avenue around 430 and get yourself a table, some appetizers and a beverage with which to watch the parade. It's a great time for those young and old, and some of the parade floats throw candy, so there's always something to look forward to!

Tip #1: Get a map book, they're available even when the office is closed. We got into Toppenish…read morewhen the Chamber of Commerce was closed, this is where the mural visitor information is, and there are brown signs that sort of guide you. They have a rack outside that has a bunch of guide books and these are key. Tip #2: plan a few hours, and do yourself a favor, get out of your car and walk around. We're going to have to go back because we under-estimated the time we would want to spend. These are surprisingly high-quality art pieces and a remarkable quantity. A lot of towns SAY they are a "town of murals" so I expected same-old same-old and am happy to say I was wrong.

Excellent food Attentive staff…read moreWonderful lighting for ambiance!!! Beautiful arrangements and decor!!! Will be coming back!!!

Honestly, I really wanted to love this place because I had heard such great reviews about it. The…read moreambience is very cute, but unfortunately the service was extremely disappointing. It started with our drinks. My friends ordered peach martinis, but two purple martinis came out instead. I asked the waiter what flavor they were and he said pear. I explained that we didn't order those, and eventually the correct peach martinis were brought out. However, they were oddly placed in front of me instead of the friends who actually ordered them and didn't have drinks yet. Then when our food arrived, one of my friends had ordered pesto pasta with specific instructions, but she was served Alfredo instead. Because of that mistake, we had to wait additional time for the correct dish. Earlier in the meal we were also asked if we wanted bread, and we assumed it was complimentary. When the checks arrived, we noticed the bread had been charged to one of the cards randomly. It would have been nice to know upfront that there was a cost for it. Being open and transparent about things like that is important in this industry and helps build trust with customers. Unfortunately, things continued to go wrong. All four of us had leftovers, and the restaurant takes the food to the back to pack it up for you. When our waiter returned with the boxes, he gave the meals to the wrong people. Luckily we opened them to double check, especially since there had already been several mix-ups throughout the night. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, but we were seated on the upper level and there was no one else around us. Regardless of whether a restaurant is busy or not, there should still be a standard of service, and unfortunately that was not reflected during our visit. Mistakes can happen, but acknowledging them and making an effort to fix them goes a long way, and that was something we didn't experience from our waiter.

One of my favorite wine places to go to here in Yakima. The views are great outside. Would…read morerecommend making a reservation because it gets packed. The wine flights are fun but also I'm just a sucker for sparkling/bubbly wine!

Treveri is still one of the most popular wine destinations in the region, and for good reason. They…read moreare located in a beautiful spot, with a perfect view of the rest of the valley and Mt Adams, with gorgeous grounds, great wine, and a lot of features that just make it a nice place to visit. We came for a visit around lunchtime on Sunday, and were promptly seated with menus in a nicely shaded spot outdoors. You can truly spend a ton of time here just enjoying the view from the many shaded comfy seating areas outdoors, where you can admire the impeccable landscaping or the landscape itself. It did take a while for someone to come take our order, and we ended up having to wave someone down. If we weren't so hungry we probably wouldn't have been bothered by this at all, given that it's such a pleasant setting. After that, the pace of service was very good and we felt well attended to. We got the taste of treveri flight, a flatbread, a mezze platter, and the cajun fries. It seems based on my last review quite a few years ago that tastings were free then. That is not the case anymore, and most of the flights cost $20. If you buy two bottles of wine, then the tasting fee is waived I think for up to two tastings. Anyway, the flight was great, with a nice variety of sparkling wines that really showcased their range. Our favorites were the blanc to blanc and the syrah. The food was also pretty good, and I appreciated that they actually had substantial food here. I don't know how people manage to go wine tasting and then drive to their next spot without eating a real meal. My husband enjoyed the seasonal flatbread, which featured apples and walnuts. The cajun fries were solid. The chicken skewers and gyro type meat on the mezze platter were quite flavorful and juicy! I liked the variety of vegetables on the platter, although the olives could've definitely been better--they seemed like they'd been sitting in a jar for a while and had lost a lot of their texture. Keep in mind that prices for food here are definitely higher than you might see at a regular restaurant. The flatbread which was approximately the size of a six inch pizza, was $20, and the mezze platter was $35. Wouldn't pay those prices regularly, but since you can't bring in outside food, it's part of the experience here and I would say is worthwhile during a visit.