We're not native drivers yet!

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We left Silver Spur this morning and intended to get to Fresno in about three hours~~instead it took five and a half! Have I mentioned that there are a lot of people in California, and they all drive? Drive fast! We drove down highway 99, where they had the 100 car pileup last week. We weren’t sure exactly where it happened, but we came to one stretch, several miles long, that had a lot more trash on it than normal, and later we found out that’s where it occurred. It should have been obvious to us, because there was fabric, wood, tires, paper…just everything lining the fences. It made us feel bad that we’d joked about the Fine for Littering $1000 sign in the midst of the trash.

We drove past miles and miles and miles of groves~~tangerine, orange, lemon, plum, and olive, but mostly orange. The navel oranges are still on the trees, and won’t be picked until January or February, depending on the weather….they need to have a couple hard frosts before they’re sweet enough to pick. They’re turning orange, and many are on the ground, like windfall, but they’re not ripe. We were told they fell in the wind from the storm a couple weeks ago. We also saw hay on the ground! In a couple fields they were baling it, but in others it was laying, drying!

If we thought it was dry in Tuolumne (and we did) it’s nothing like this area. We’re in a nice trailer/RV park, sitting on a cement slab, with the smallest dab of grass between spaces. There’s just nothing growing that isn’t watered, and what isn’t growing is a different brown that we’re used to seeing. Lots of smoke in the air, and my sinuses are protesting.


There’s another thing I keep forgetting to tell you~~many (most?) of the school around here are built so that the classrooms open to the outdoors, rather than into a hallway. The lockers are outside, and the kids have to go outdoors to change classes! How strange is that?! My first thought was how they kept the kids from leaving school between classes!

We had dinner with some friends who live here, and then visited till late. Tomorrow we’re going to Sequoia National Forest.

Happy Birthday to my twins, Lisa and Sara!

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Photos

Can you see why we thought
the oranges were nearly ready to harvest? Apparently their color doesn't indicate their ripeness. Their thick skin keeps them from being damaged by the cold, unless it gets really cold, or stays cold too long. The Valentia oranges were ready months ago, and they have thin skins. The orange trees are sturdy enough that they don't have to be propped up to support all their fruit. Most of the trees don't reach the ground like this...they stand up like regular fruit trees.

I'm not kidding about the smoke.
But it does make a pretty sunset!

It shouldn't have taken a law
to get this idea across....

One more of the gazebo,
as far as the guys got it done.

This is looking at the amphitheater
from the gazebo. I thought it might give you an idea of the distance between them.