A long drive from Bakersfield to Redding

     A really long driving day, 475 miles of viewing every kind of fruit and vegetable grown in the US!  Or so it seems!  We drove up US 99 through the San Joaquin Valley to Hanford, cut across the state past the Lemore Naval Air Station (why in the world is their a NAVAL air station in the middle of an agricultural valley???), then up Interstate 5 to Redding.

     US 99 was the most interesting part of the journey, as we traveled through this heavy agricultural area predominately growing citrus fruits.  Off to the east, the whole ride north, were the Sierra Nevada's covered with snow tops, and they made a most impressive backdrop.  

      We saw a sign for a California Welcome center as we drove, and after turning off in Tulare CA were most surprised to see a B-17 and F-4 Phantom parked on the service road!  Jim got out and took some pictures.  Turns out the B-17 was a gift from the USAF to the AMVETS commemorating the WWII veterans from the area; the plane, "Prestons Pride", was named after a local USAF General (Preston, of course!) who flew the plane in.  The F-4 Phantom was another gift from the Air Force, and has a memorial plaque in front of it with the names of all the local veterans who were killed in Vietnam.

     Going across the state, probably about 50 miles or so, the mammoth fields under cultivation give one only the barest picture of why we have the abundance of food that we do.  Thousands of acres, and occasionally we'd see a "gang" of agricultural workers picking stuff or planting things in the field.  What really surprised us was the lack of living quarters for these folks--where in the world DO thay live?

The drive up I 5 was really pretty boring.  Again, it was mostly agriculture, but now we were more into trees. Lots of evergreens, with an occasional redwood.;  The west side of  the road was foothills almost the entire route north, and what was most surprising to us was how green they were, mile after mile.  We've never seen anything but brown foothills in California before!
     Sacramento is supposed to be the "city of trees", but the highway is enclosed by those noise barrier walls the entire distance through the city.    North of there, we saw numerous olive groves and grapevines along the route.
     As we arrived in Redding, we saw how the city was surrounded by beautiful mountains (predominated by Mt. Shasta), but we couldn't see the tops due to the heavy clouds.  The campground was beautiful, large lots surrounded by trees and very well laid out.  One of the best we've been to!