Thursday, February 21, 2008

NOW UPDATED WITH PHOTOS (Feb 24)



After we packed up in the morning, we continued on route 166 through agricultural areas where the tractors were out working the land.
As we dropped out of the high country around Cayama, down toward Maricopa we entered 'oil' country where in some areas there were small working wells only 100 yards apart in some areas. Then it changed to orange groves, and grapes. The road led east and we crossed I-5 for the first time since we left it on Feb 2nd at Chehalis, Wa.
East of I-5 there were huge dairy operations.
While gassing up and hanging out in Arvin (just south west of Bakersfield), it started to pour rain.
There are no storm drains there, so all the water accumulates on the road and runs down the street. In just a few minutes there were a number of small floods starting and several homeowners were outside keeping an eye on it.
As we headed up into the hills outside Arvin, the sun was shining on the green rolling hills, which resulted in a few photos!

Even Harley seemed impressed by the scenery.
I stopped on the highway to take this one, then I noticed the hawk sitting on the post watching me!

Decided to spend the night in a high country town of Tehachapi (took me half the day to figure out how to spell that) and it didn't hurt that I found some really fast wi-fi to catch up on the e-mail and news from home.
Unfortunately, it has an elevation of 3-4000', so it was pretty dang cool, and we may have experienced frost!
But I checked the web cam out my front window at home. Although the thermometer shows that it is certainly warm in the sun, the huge piles of snow make me glad to worry more about grass stains than frostbite!

Just down the road is the small town of Mojave, California.
35.0646°-118.157°
Some of it's claims to fame is that it is home to Air and Spaceport USA, where the only privately funded space flights originated. It is also home to the civilian Test Pilot school, and it may have as many old aircraft as people? It is one of the homes of out-of-service airliners, and others that have been decommissioned.
There are rows and rows of 747's, Airbuses, helicopters, old military jets all over the airport and runway areas.
Unfortunately, I could not find any type of information centre to get more details. The planes are plainly (pardon the pun) visible on Google Earth, which is why I wanted to have a look at this place to start with. It is also just down the road from Edwards Air Force Base. I spotted that on GE as well, spotting a runway that was 5 miles long that I believe is the back-up Space Shuttle landing area. Curiously, there is a huge compass marked out on the ground that is a kilometer in diameter!
Check it out in Google Earth!

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