Drive from SJBautista to Placentia on Feb 22nd 03-02-20

I finally spent some time editing the pictures I took on I-5 coming home on the 22nd.  There are a LOT of almond trees; they line the highway and stretch to the rising hills for miles and miles.  In between there are fallow fields, open uncultivated land, other orchards, and, of course, off ramps that lead to gas stations, restaurants, etc.   It is harder to take pictures with a cell phone when I am driving and I plan to go back to a point and shoot camera.  I think the images are better using that method.  Here are some views from along the way.

  

Something that is pretty prominent are the billboards begging for more water for agriculture.  One of which questions: "Is it wasting water to grow food?"  I know that there are new methods for watering crops, very few farms along this route use overhead sprinklers now. 

I have no idea what the actual problem is, other than the continuing drought, but I do get tired of the signs.  

Almond blossoms.

Almond blossoms, bee hives, tumbleweeds. 

Almond blossoms and tumbleweeds. 

Almond blossoms and lowering clouds. 

NOT almonds, another nut or fruit, along with tumbleweeds. 

 More NOT almonds. 

And then it started to rain.  More almond blossoms and beehives. 

Well, you get the idea!  California grows 80% of the world's almonds and they are the #1 exported crop.  

There are other crops growing along I-5 in the valley.  Lots of grapes, both for wine making and produce.  I have seen the pickers packing the grapes directly in the boxes that are shipped to stores. 

Almonds in the distance, grapes in the foreground. 

And there are some orange and lemon orchards. I know these are oranges because I have driven the route when the fruit was still on the trees.  All picked and shipped now. 

Citrus trees have very dense foliage and the leaves are dark and glossy.  

Saw a lot of these low growing yellow wild flowers, but I don't know what it is.  This is uncultivated land.  But almonds in the background. 

A green crop in the background and plain old grass on the freeway verge. 

These are piles of dead almond trees.   It seems they cut down the old trees and let them dry out in the fields, then they are scraped into these huge piles. 

 And the piles are ground into mulch.

There are several facilities along the way to which the mulch is trucked and then processed for further mulching.  The trees have a life span of 20 -25 years and do not bear fruit the first 3 or 4 years.  Almonds are alternate bearing so that a large crop one year is often followed by a lighter crop the next year.  [Google]

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Placentia to San Juan Bautista, CA 02-19-20

On Feb 1st I drove home from my last trip to San Juan Bautista and there were very few almond trees in bloom.  Today, driving the same route north all the trees are in bloom.  Didn't see many wildflowers, but some uncultivated areas had swaths of tiny yellow flowers growing very low on the ground.  Unfortunately the photos from the moving car did not turn out well.  Traffic was not bad and the trip was just about six hours with two stops, one at a rest stop near Buttonwillow and the other for gas in Santa Nella.  I usually have about 30 miles of gas left when I arrive there so it is prudent to fill up.  And nice to pay $2.099/gal.  

It is nice to be with Mary again, in her lovely new house.  And tomorrow we will go to Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove to hang quilts from the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection.  Lunch is, of course, in order before driving back to SJBautista. 

Always traffic getting anywhere in Orange County.  This is where two freeways slip together and then apart in different directions.  Always lots of trucks.  Dare I drive between these to bemouths?

Over the Grapevine and into the miles of orchards, mostly almonds, blooming wildly.  Notice the tumbleweeds piled against the fence and the white beehives on the right.  Many farmers rent the beehives to fertilize their trees.  

Where there aren't orchards there are pastures which are GREEN now.  The bare area behind the fence posts is a dirt road for farm access. 

 More almonds blooming and another stack of beehives on the right. 

Here is a fallow field that used to have almond trees.  Once the land is prepared another crop will be planted  Maybe more almonds. 

Untilled land with sagebrush and weeds.  I thought that I might be seeing the Sierra in the distance, but looking  closely at the picture, I think it is just the clouds over the Sierra.  

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From Tucson - homeward bound Posted 02-13-18

Regardless of how great a trip is, there is always the time one must head home. 

From the awesome landscape of the Tanque Verde Ranch where the classes ended at 4pm...

...an hour drive in traffic to get to I-10 and the rush hour traffic headed north toward Pheonix, which is where the smog in the distance comes from. 

Beyond that was the sun setting in a blaze of glory to the west. 

And too quickly disappearing into the horizon. 

After an overnight in Yuma, I continued on I-8 and drove past this solar farm - the black on the right of the picture. 

It is vast, miles along the highway, and here you can see the solar panels tilted to the sun. 

Not many miles further on the forest of a wind turbine farm appears at the foothills. 

They are widely spaced here, where some wind farms are very dense, just enough space between towers to clear the other arms flailing. 

In the vast landscape they don't seem so large, but up close they tower like redwoods in the sky.  Also along I-8 are wide spread fields of row crops that are harvested for markets all over the world.  Lettuce, celery, broccoli, beets, etc., all grow in the winter sun.   Driving out to Yuma I saw a flock of about 20 egrets resting along an irrigation canal. 

After the veggie, sun, and wind farms comes the true low desert....

...which goes on and on and on and on and.............................!

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From Dunsmuir to San Juan Bautista 05-13-15

When you drive south down the mountains from Dunsmuir the next "sight to see" is Shasta Lake, which is a reservoir that helps supply water to the great central valley.  After Red Bluff the land becomes flatter and drier and I-5 seems to stretch endlessly.  It was a little over nine hours and 420 miles from Yreka to San Juan Bautista - but I had a  break of about an hour at Dunsmuir, plus a gas stop and a stop at a rest area along the way. 

 

Shasta Lake is very low from the drought conditions This is the I-5 bridge.

Once down in the valley the highway divider strip is planted with oleanders of every color.  Some have grown huge over the years, like this white one.

Other places the pinks and reds are predominant.  They at least provide something green to look at in the brown landscape.

South of Williams the rice fields begin.  When I drove north several weeks ago the fields had not yet been flooded and I wondered if there was a lack of water to start the crop.

But they seemed to all be filled on my way home. 

These are just north of Sacramento.....

....where the road goes up a long man made grade...

...and passes over the Sacramento River -  quite a bit larger than it was in Dunsmuir.

 

Sacramento is the capitol city of California, but the capitol building is drowned by the tall "sky scrapers" of the downtown.

It is always amazing to see a city after all the miles of mountains and flat farm country.

Between Sacramento and Stockton I saw this huge field of wild mustard, more than I had seen, or would see, on the entire trip.

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Southwest of Stockton there are just rolling hills and lonely farms and flat fields and cattle ranches.  I'm sure this place was built before the Interstate, surely nobody would build this close to all the traffic going continuously by.  This stretch of I-5 was built in the late 1960s.

Turning onto Hwy 156 the road goes through rolling hills and over the top into the valley that is the center of "row crops".  Lettuce, spinach, mixed greens, cauliflower, broccoli, and on and on.

The fire breaks are kept cleared all year round.  Good thing as this is the area where I saw the grass fire on my way home to Placentia.

Heading west on Hwy 156 there is a fog bank hanging over the coastal mountains - means that Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel are experiencing fog and cool weather.  When it is hottest in the inland valley it is foggiest along the coast. 

 

It was a great trip - almost 3000 miles and only one night of rain in Washington.  I do need to take three nights on the road, driving it all in three days is too hard on this old gal.

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