Los Rios Rancho is the largest of the family apple farms strung along Oak Glen Road and the one most worth driving up to from Yucaipa. The 100-acre ranch has been growing apples here since the 1900s — twenty heritage varieties, almost none of which you will see in a supermarket — and runs a substantial farm shop with pies, jams, hot cider, and a working bakery.
The u-pick orchard opens in September and runs until the trees are stripped, usually mid-November. There are also pony rides, a small petting zoo, and a hay-bale maze in autumn, which makes the place sound twee until you taste a still-warm apple pie eaten on a picnic table under a oak tree. The drive up Oak Glen Road from Yucaipa takes twenty minutes and climbs about 600 metres into the foothills.