My husband and I recently returned from a much-needed vacation in Southern California. He’s from Glendale (a Los Angeles suburb) so we started off there, then spent a few nights in Hermosa Beach. From HB we drove to Palm Desert and stayed a few nights, then returned to Glendale for a night before flying back home.

For some reason it didn’t occur to me to research local orchid growers prior to our trip, but a couple minutes into our drive to Palm Desert I thought, “hey, we should see if there are any orchid nurseries along the way!” So I searched “orchid nursery” on Google Maps’ new pit stop feature…and lo and behold, a whole bunch of places popped up. The first one I saw was Norman’s Orchids—whose website I’ve browsed many times before—and it was only located about 10 minutes out of the way on our drive. The decision was a no-brainer: we had to stop by on our mini road trip!