California Circus Days

We spent the month of May is California.  It is a diverse state with four regions-desert, mountains, central plains, and coastline.  We traversed the mid and northern parts with the circus.

  Entering the Mojave Desert mojave desert.net was quite and experience.  The desert seemed to go on forever with huge mountains in the distance.  Once past Edwards, AFB, we started to climb through Bakers, CA.  Here Linda and I had to pretend we were on a giant roller coaster.  The terrain just goes up and down between 2-4 K.  One grade is 6 1/2%!  Don't know how fast I was going, couldn't let my eyes go off the road--but I tell you it wasn't my typical 55MPH.  With the rough roads, cross winds, and S curves, it was like Mr Toads WILD ride at Disney--for a fraction of the cost!  We didn't see much wildlife (just the road signs) on the way in, but the drivers made up for the desert wild!  70 is just a "suggestion" to these folks!
The next segment brought us to the Central Valley.  Dirt here is black!  We saw such lush strawberries, almonds, dates, apricots and cherries growing every where.  We camped in a place near Modesto called the Orchards.  The smell of cherries and apricots was in the air.  Check up on Modesto at Modesto.CA  I generally shun CA fruit, but they save the good stuff for the locals.  We had some of the best cherries I have ever eaten!  Of course up the road is grapes, grapes, and more grapes!  There is a winery down every road and for five bucks they will let you taste their juices.

Here we got our first rain.  It turned the air cooler and the temps drop into the 40s at night.  I makes for good sleeping, and the smog isn't bad in the smaller places, but Fresno, and Sacramento were hazy places.
We went from Sacramento down to Monteray.  There we ate at Cannery Row.  It was a quaint seaport, with seals in the bay.  I stuck my toe in the water (its May) and it almost turned blue.  Linda was content with walking on the beach.  She had dungeness crab and we watched the sun go down over the horizon.  A perfect day!  Still northward, we headed to Fairfield, CA.  It is the home of Jelly Belly.  We took the kids for a factory tour.  You can get a sugar high from just walking near the place!  The kids loved it!
We swung through Napa Valley and did a side trip to San Francisco.  We ate a Scormas on pier 47.  Check them out at Scormas.com.  I didn't get to see Alcatraz as the fog rolled in and it was cloudy over the bridge.  Maybe next time.

The 12 kids are great and circus life is busy.  One of the trapeze artists fell and broke his legs.  So far, we have traveled over 3,000 miles with the circus.
We are on our way to Northern Nevada.  On the way we traveled through Donner Pass.  It looked like the middle of December with 2 inches of snow on the ground.  It seemed so weird to be driving in the snow in June-not December.  We didn't bring that many winter clothes, so we are wearing many layers.
More next time.....