Tuesday

Goodbye wine country.

During morning coffee in Napa, we decided to change up our trip plans (yet again). We had never been to North Central California so we decide to give it a try. We left the rolling vineyard covered hills of Napa and moved into the Sacramento valley. Surrounded by mountains, this very flat valley is full of sunflower farms, strawberry fields, orchards of oranges, apples, cherries, almonds and olives to name a few. We moved from farm country to ranch country to mountains again throughout the day. We began the day at an altitude of 15 and ended in Ponderosa Pine country around 5100 feet. We stopped in Corning, CA (the olive capital of the USA) and stumbled on to Route 99. I think we followed it for a while but it is not marked as well as most of 66. Mark filled you in on the fires so I won't say much else about those. As frightening as they are, they do provide surreal and beautiful views. Along with the fires we also saw giant cranes (I think they were emus) antelope, goats, sheep, and a small herd of majestic bucks standing at the edge of a hillside orchard. There is a huge alkaline lake (Goose) located at the boarder areas of CA & OR that is nearly dry. There was a cloud of dust blowing over the dirt where the water should have been. There was also a train that had derailed in the mountains. We pulled over for a lot of pictures today but I'm sure they cannot convey the true beauty of this area. That is the best part of this trip....seeing the landscape change 2-3 times a day and being excited to see what the next days journey will bring. Tomorrow we have a short trip to Idaho so we'll take our time and see what we can find along the way.