A small town nestled in the foothills of Southern California. Oak Glen contains a hand full of apple orchards. Located only a short drive from Los Angeles, it makes for a quick and fun day trip with the kids. There are activities for all ages with several carnival type games to keep you busy.
Heading East on the 10 fwy, you will want to exit on Oak Glen Road and make a right. Head straight up the canyon until you get high enough in elevation to see the apple trees. There are a number of orchards that cater to the tourists. One of the larger, and more commercialized ones is the Oak Tree Mountain
On the weekends, parking can be tough. We took our Sprinter, of course, and were easily able to find street parking. The larger vans can fit in to the parking lots. However, if the lots are approaching capacity, you could easily get stuck trying to find a spot only to have to reverse back out of the lot if nothing is available. Your best bet for the larger vehicles is to just find street parking. Alternatively, there is a dirt lot just past the Oak Tree Mountain on the Left side of the road. As of the time of this writing the parking fee was $5.
Tubing without snow?
On the bottom end of the Oak Tree Mountain there is a small inner tube/sledding hill. For a few bucks you can get a ticket to ride a tube down the hill. This hill is accessible for those of you with some mobility issues. They use a conveyor belt to help you get to the top so no stairs!! They also let kids under 3 ride with an adult. 3 and over are able to ride alone. The hill gets you moving pretty fast for the smaller kids but my 2 y/o absolutely loved it.
The cost for the hill was an individual ticket charge of $8 or $20 for three tickets. They don’t charge you for the 3 and under crowd. For Josh, Lily, and me to ride with Alex it was only $20. Alex loved it so much we had to do it again before leaving.
The Petting Zoo
For the less adventurous kids, there is a small petting zoo on the far side of the tube hill. They were charging $5 for the petting zoo. Seemed like a standard fee for what it was. Though in my opinion the petting zoo was pretty weak. They had a few goats and 3 pigs with a couple sheep in a fenced area. They had a few deer and various birds but they were not accessible for the kids. You could walk up to the edge of the enclosure but not able to pet them. Also, they did not offer the feeding cups that other petting zoo’s typically have available.
Food Service and the Playground
Food service was crazy slow. I am amazed at how slow it was because all they served was hot dogs and nachos. For some reason we stood in line for a handful of $12 hotdogs that took them almost an hour to manifest. Seating was packed due to the live band that was playing. The venue was pretty cool though even if the food service wasn’t.
I also noticed that Just to the side of the food service area was a small playground for the kids. This came in handy due to the long wait time. Uncle Scott took the kids to the playground while Jen and I spent some time getting to know other parents also standing in line for a $12 hotdog.
Wrapping Up
Overall, the day was great. The scenery was quirky as expected for any sort of mountain town. I think the oddly placed hand carved signs everywhere and the random umbrellas over the food service area seemed to be a nicely placed odd touch. It wanted to feel like it was out of place but for some reason it was actually tastefully done.
No trip to Oak Glen is complete without tasting some of the local Cider. Jen found a small hole in the wall shop with very friendly staff. After all the kids took their taste test of the cider, we decided to buy a few bottles of it for home. The kids loved it and so did Mom. If you do make it out to Oak Glen and find some hidden gem that we should take a look at, please let us know in the comments.
