Lettuce Wine on our Way to Santa Clara

We left the Atascadero Elks lodge around 9:00am this morning and started our travels north on Hwy 101 toward Santa Clara where we plan to spend at least 3 nights.

We passed by an area populated with several oil wells in a close area.

Once again, we passed several vineyards along the highway.

We were even passed by an official Google Earth street view camera atop a car.

The trees on the left served as either a privacy fence or wind barrier.

We had to slow down and move into the left lane due to an accident this morning.

The CHP officer seems to be kicking something off the road.

It looks like the price of lettuce will be going up real soon!

A fresh crop of lettuce was just starting to show in this field.  Perhaps the price won’t go up too soon.

This field looks close to being ready to harvest.

Lettuce is being harvested in this field.

We’re getting closer to San Jose.

We arrived at the Santa Clara Elks lodge and got set up in our parking place for the next three nights.  After lunch, we took a tour of the area, ran some errands and returned to the RV for the evening.

While here in Santa Clara, Ken will be meeting with a distant cousin he has recently found out about who has a family bible dating back to the early 1800’s.  Another distant cousin who we met with last spring on our way north is driving down so that they can all get together.  It should be an interesting weekend meeting new family members.

A Day Trip to Morro Bay, CA

Our drive today took us through downtown Atascadero as we headed for Hwy 41 to Morro Bay.

As we turned south on Hwy 41, we found a different type of terrain from what we traveled yesterday through the vineyard country with the rolling hills.  Today found us in a heavily forested that hugged the highway.

As the landscape opened up a bit more, we found ourselves in avocado country.  There were large orchards everywhere we looked with avocado trees.

We stopped when we saw this sign for the Avocado Country Store.

 

Neither of us had seen a avocado tree before, so we had to get a couple of close up photos of the avocados ripening on the tree.

Getting closer to Morro Bay, we found a couple of distinctive landmarks.

Three smoke stacks from a generator plant.

And then there is Morro Rock out in the bay.

We drove through Morro Bay State Park to check it out.  There were squirrels running around all over the place there.  This little guy was resting comfortably on a picnic table apparently waiting for delivery service.

After driving north of town for a short distance, I got this shot of Morro Rock as we headed south.

It’s amazing to see how they’ve stacked houses on the hillsides here.

After enjoying a wonderful seafood lunch at Giovanni’s in Morro Bay we drove south along the bay and then headed back north to get another angle on Morro Rock.

This “woody” was sitting in front of a business in the downtown area.

As we continued our drive south, we went through Baywood Park area and Ken saw this fenceline and turned around so I could get a photo.  Just in case you can’t read it, the sign was for a business with Breakthrough as part of their name.

We continued our trip through Los Osos and into San Luis Obispo to catch Hwy 101 and our return to the Elks lodge in Atascadero.  Although we had leftovers stashed in our refrigerator, we opted to have dinner at the Elks tonight.  The meal of the night was beef stroganoff and it was a wonderful meal and Elks members here have been very hospitable.  We’ll be continuing our journey north in the morning as we head toward Santa Clara for our next stop.

Laughlin, NV to Atascadero, CA

Although the temperatures were supposed to drop lower than the 100’s over the past 3 days in Laughlin, it was still to be in the mid 90’s.  As our RV has been running hot in the higher temperatures, we decided to get an earlier start on Tuesday to get over the higher hills earlier in the day.  We were on the road by 7:30am and headed south on the Needles Highway.  The road is actually in pretty good condition in Nevada, but once you cross the California border, it gets a lot rougher.  We found today that it has been worse than what it was today.

Crossing the Nevada/California border.

At Needles, we turn onto I-40 west.

How’s this for smooth driving?

We passed through windmill country.

Heading down to Bakersfield.

We’re getting closer to Bakersfield.

After turning onto Hwy 99 north, we saw a plane doing some aerobatic type maneuvers, but we think now it was just fertilizing the fields…no big deal.

After our fuel stop, we headed west on Hwy 46 and passed several fields of almond trees.

And we drove through one area with numerous oil wells.

And we went up and down hills through the wine country.

And construction areas.

We turned south on Hwy 101 and drove about 9 miles to our exit for the Atascadero Elks lodge where we’ll be staying for 2-3 nights before continuing our journey north.

Omak, WA

We are finally on the road again! We left the Spokane, WA Elks this morning and drove to Omak, WA where we're spending the night at Carl Precht Memorial RV Park for the night. This is a nice campground with trees for shade in some of the sites. We have 30amp electric, water, and sewer available to us and it's on the Okanagon River. This is the site of the Omak Stampede which is a big event every summer here. Since we were last here in September 2008, the rates have gone up from $16/night to $20/night. They are in the process of building a huge grandstand for the rodeo grounds.

Spokane, Wa - Elks Lodge

It's May 23rd and this was the day we planned to leave Spokane and start our Alaska trip. Unfortunately, Ken's Mom fell last week and ended up in the emergency room with fractures in her upper arm. In the process, we had to move her to an assisted living facility. Needless to say, it's been a very busy week for us. She is now settled in to her new home and seems to be doing well. She will be well cared for by family and the facility. We now plan to be on the road early Monday morning.

Mother's Day Brunch at the Spokane Elks

We're parked at the Elks Club in Spokane, WA as we await the start of our Alaska trip. Today is Mother's Day and the Spokane Elks had a brunch. We were joined by Ken's mother, brother, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons and it was the first nice day we've had here in quite a while.