Day 19: Tehachapi to Santa Rosa: about 350 miles

As we drove through the hills, we were greeted by the haze (smog?)  of Bakersfield.  The fields were green with crops.  This was more green (verde) than we had seen in the last 2+ weeks.  But once we gott to Bakersfield and headed north up highway 99, we were back to brown.

We followed our route of two years ago  and cut over to I-5 at highway 46. The almond (we think) trees are now in full bloom with pink flowers.  We noticed stacked white boxes here and there under the trees with what we surmised were imported bees.  This theory was confirmed later as T cleaned our windshield.

We passed the feedlots at the Harris Ranch exit and after consulting my previous blog determined that we had spent the night at this stop on our last Tucson trip.      

We traveled along the California Aquaduct which does still have water and passed by "Pea Soup Andersen's" in Santa Nella.  The hills were touched with a green tint (unlike when we traveled this way 2 weeks ago).  Then we came to fields of crops which had signs identifying them as oranges, mandarins, and lemons, and encouraging us to "Eat More Cirtus."

At Wesley, we gassed up, cleaned the windshield, and changed drivers. R got up up 580 to 680 and into Benecia.  Along the way, we passed through another forest of wind turbines sticking up from the rolling grass-covered hills much like the saguaros in the desert.

Ms. D was having fits.  It turns out that T had set her to avoid toll roads and we were headed straight for a toll bridge.  Once the operator error was corrected, Ms. D was back to normal.

We dropped off R at her home in Benecia  and stayed for a pleasant reststop on her warm (80 degrees), inviting patio.  She has a huge Meyers lemon tree, and T and I left with lemons and pleasant memories of a great trip.

T and I headed north to Santa Rosa.  We made a stop in Petaluma to pick up T's son  C and proceeded to our aunt Lu's house in Santa Rosa. After a pleasant visit, Lu recommended we have dinner at a local Italian place called Mary's.  Ms. D could only find a place called Mary's  Pizza Shack -- that didn't sound right--So we let Lu guide us to the place after a stop at Walgreens.  Somewhere between Walgreens and Mary's, we lost Lu's handicap parking tag.  So T had to search for another parking spot after dropping us off at Mary's.

Turns out this was Mary's Pizza Shack.  Still it had a local feel.  That is until C said, " They have one of these in Redding."  The food was good.

After dinner we drove to Sebastopol and broke into cousin's J & J's house.  We watched the Olympics until they returned and after a short visit, we turned in for the night.