That California Winter Look

Travelling the I5 in the winter can be tricky. Usually there is only rain from Seattle to Grant's Pass. After that, it can change in a moments notice when the winter storms sweep in from the Pacific and hit the higher elevations. We got lucky this year. Rain on the way down, and warm showers on the way home. Of course, the down side to that is that it is a bit grey and boring. Central California is especially grey. We had no blue sky from Mojave to Sacramento.

There is that long stretch where all one can do is count trucks and how many times we pass the same ones, and watch out for 'smokies' because everyone is driving over the limit.

How many millions of nut trees and fruit trees did we pass? It is hard to say but I would not want to prune them all. The rows are insanely perfectly straight and they go as far as the eye can see. They are up to their armpits in fruit and nuts in this country but when you go to a farmers market or see a truck selling produce in the parking lot of a gas station, you can be sure it will be twice what we pay at home. Oranges are being harvested now and we passed so many trucks carrying tons of them. Yet, they sell them for almost twice what we pay at home, where there are no oranges growing anywhere.

On the way south, we spotted these, the first palm trees and orange trees and we got really excited. Somehow, going north gives one a different perspective on the same trees. Not so excited. More than once I was tempted to take I5 south after filling up with gas and see how long before busylizzy saw through my ploy.  

You know you are heading north when the shorts and T-shirts are replaced with jeans and hoodies. A few more miles down the road, the hoodies were replaced with parkas. busylizzy is sporting a fake smile. She likes the warm better than the cold.  

And the last orchard of any type we saw before we hit the sheep and cattle country of Oregon was an Olive Grove. These are interesting and beautiful trees with their gnarled charm.

These Olive trees are confused. On one branch there are hard green, rosy cheeked early ripe, pinky red all over, black ripe, and old shrivelled ready to fall off olives. My theory is that they are picked all at once and then dyed either green or black. That way they all taste terrible and become destined to make a perfectly good pizza taste terrible too.