California Adventures

California is in the midst of the coldest temperatures they have seen in 30 years. There was snow and ice through much of Northern and Central California as we went through and it was a cool 56* here in San Diego yesterday. Over 80% of the total winter citrus crop has been lost so far. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected who have jobs in farming, packing, processing, and trucking. Governor Schwarzenegger has declared an emergency and they are anxiously watching the trees to see how badly they were damaged. Previous cold snaps have ruined the current crops, but not lasted long enough to freeze the trees themselves, this one is different. It has already been colder and stayed colder than in previous instances and people are deeply concerned.

Having never driven through the central valley of California I was amazed at the scale of the agricultural operations. Yes, I know they call it the salad bowl, and of course I was aware of how much of our food comes from this area, but it’s one of those things that you can’t really understand until you have seen it. We drove for miles along endless seas of trees. They stretched toward the hills beyond our line of sight in orderly rows that seemed so precise we were convinced they laid them out by GPS. Most of the area we went through was planted in nut trees and vineyards, but we passed an occasional orange or avocado grove and thousands upon thousands of well furrowed fields waiting to be planted. There were also huge numbers of cattle. Some were basic feed lots growing beef cattle, but many had huge milking sheds at least a kilometer in length. We got used to seeing the huge mounds of manure covered over by white plastic and studded by old tires and rims pushed through to hold the plastic down on the pile. Milking sheds and manure piles are common in both Texas and Washington, but the scale here was just unimaginable.

We went south and then west from Modesto and crossed through Pacheco pass where we stopped at Casa de Frutas. Casa de is actually a large roadside complex with
Casa de Restaurant
Casa de Wines
Casa de Carousel
Casa de Hotel
Casa de Train

Casa de Diesel
Casa de….

It was campy and fun, not too crowded, and we bought great dates and oranges. We did not eat at the restaurant, but they apparently used to have a waiter there who was famous for cup flipping. Just the type of thing you look for in a roadside attraction.
We tried to visit another roadside attraction we read about just west of Gilroy that consisted of "circus trees" - trees that had been woven and twisted and pretty much trained to grow in very freaky ways, but apparently it is located inside of an amusement park that is closed for the season.

I did have a bit of luck coming out of Gilroy though, I spotted money on the side of the road. Of course, it was a fake, huge $1000 bill printed only on one side, but still it was money, kind of, sort of, ok - not really.

We saw another type of cash crop in the more desolate land between the mountains in the west and the really fertile central valley - oil. Every once in a while we would drive over a rise and see huge fields of oil wells. Not as plentiful as I remember from Texas, and the pumps themselves weren't as large, but it was still a bit jarring to see them there right after passing an orchard.

When we finally made it to the beach in Oceanside it was a chilly 60*, but we went for a walk anyway. The sand there is studded with tiny gold colored flecks and the whole beach shimmered in the late afternoon sun. It was not the warm sunny beach we had been anticipating, but it was still warmer than Seattle.