After several months of no rain (unusual for winter in California), the heavens have opened. It rained in much of California most of Wednesday and Friday this week just gone, all night Friday night and much of Saturday. As another storm front was coming in I changed my plans and decided to leave Monterey today (Saturday) instead of Sunday. And I’m glad I did.
Storm clouds inland from Monterey on Hwy 101
It took me just under 4 hours to drive from Monterey to Bakersfield, which is perhaps half way to Palm Springs, my ultimate destination tomorrow. Had I left it to Sunday I’d be driving 7 to 8 hours in possibly horrible conditions.
As it was, driving today wasn’t exactly a piece of cake. There were strong winds, heavy rain in patches, steady rain the rest of the time, some minor rock falls on the shoulders (though if you’d hit one of those small rocks with your car tires, you’d know all about it), and reasonably steady and moderate density traffic. Lots of trucks on Hwy 46, and very bad surface for some of that highway too.
Some more observations on this drive:
- Many of the groves of nut trees (almonds? pecans?) were covered in white/pale pink flowers, which looked like light snow on the ground.
- At the ends of some rows of nut trees are bee hives. I’m not sure if they are there to fertilize the trees or to collect pollen and make honey from the flowers of these trees, but it looked like a win-win for the orchardists and the apiarists.
- Tumbling tumbleweeds have almost become fences in their own right when they’ve got caught in the fences on the side of Hwy 46.
- Lost Hills isn’t a town so much as a paddock full of oil wells (donkeys; see the photo at the end of this post). There are hundreds in a very small area of land. There are quite a few by the Alvarado River, north of Paso Robles too.
- Close to Bakersfield there are oil donkeys in the middle of fields of crops, which seemed a bit odd.
- Bakersfield looks pretty dry and dusty and very much a workers’ town, at least the bit I saw coming in from the I5 on Hwy 58.
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 