When we left White Sands National Park, we made one final stop in Alamogordo, NM before continuing on with our road trip.

A friend had suggested that McGinn’s PistachioLand was a fun stop, so we decided to check it out, if for no other reason but to have the photo opp with the world’s largest pistachio. We weren’t disappointed.

The building is surrounded by pistachio trees, which we were told would be ready to harvest in September.

You can see a part of the pistachio orchard at the end of the long veranda

There were free samples of every flavour of pistachio you could think of. Little paper cups were available to catch the samples. The dispensers provided two or three pistachios per turn of the wheel – just enough to get a taste.

There was another row of containers
on the other side of this sampling station.

The gift shop has everything imaginable, and all things pistachio, of course. A staff member kindly allowed me to go up to the balcony overlooking the store (it was barricaded off) so I could get this photo.

That’s hubs (right centre in the brown shirt)
… not straying far from the sampling station

In another part of the building there’s an ice cream parlour and a wine tasting room (McGinns is also a vineyard) We didn’t try any ice cream or wine, but we did leave with a big bag of pistachios.

Photo Note: All of the photos in this post are “as shot” (with the exception of cropping and/or resizing)

“In China, pistachios are regarded as the happy nut. A festive apple container filled with American pistachios is a gift filled with happiness and health”

American pistachios.org