Almost there.Nov 21, 2010
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| Two days of travel and we’re almost home. Yesterday we left Bakersfield and soon found some rain headed their direction. All but the first few miles have been on I-5, a familiar road to us. Near Bakersfield there was quite a lot of road construction, much of which will really improve the transportation corridors when it is finished. But once we hit the interstate, there was no change from the many times before we had traveled that way. As we were headed out, I was reminded of just how much of a focus on farming was in the Bakersfield area. We traveled through countless orchards and plowed fields, with some still having cotton waiting to be picked. The irrigation equipment was everywhere, and the contrast was quite stark from one side of I-5 to the other (the irrigated fields and the non-irrigated near-desert). We spent the night at Flag City, an RV park we have used several times near Lodi, CA. They now are a CampUSA campground, so we enjoyed the 1/2 price night and decided we might stay some more nights there in the future with that bargain to explore some of the Sacramento Delta, just a few miles to the west. We traveled through that Delta on highway 12 today, with flocks of egrets picking at the marshland and numerous hawks on power poles along the roadway. But what was even more colorful was the fields of grapevines. The last several miles on 12 and then on 101 north were lined with fields of grape vines and wineries. The grape leaves were in their full autumn colors, from deep purple through several shades of brown into bright yellows, often mixed within the same field and it almost seemed at times upon the same vine. We decided this area would be another good place to explore, as there are several valleys in the area with wineries prominently placed on the hillsides. They made a pleasant sight with the backdrop of snow on some of the higher mountain tops behind them. (The first cold snap of the season had hit the past couple of days, and it had rained in the Flag City campground most of the night.) We had decided on a short day for today, so we are at the Russian River Thousand Trails RV Park in Cloverdale for tonight, expecting to be at Eureka or north tomorrow night and home the next day. |
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