Thousand Trails RV Resort Morgan Hill, CA

It has been nearly a week since we moved to the
Thousand Trails resort here in the Santa Cruz Mountains just west of Morgan Hill. This flock of 24 wild turkeys visits us every morning. It is so peaceful & quite here, its hard to realise that we are just minutes from hi way 101 and a short 1/2 hr from San Jose and about 50 minutes from Chris & David in Redwood City.
Thanks Giving day we had Dinner with David's family at their house. On Fri evening Nancy, Chris & I went to down town San Jose for the lighting of the Christmas lights and the opening of the Christmas in the park animated Christmas scenes. Sun evening Chris, David, Nancy & I went to Gilroy Gardens to see the Christmas lights in the theme park there. We are enjoying the fall colors but wish the weather was warmer.

Winchester Mystery House San Jose, CA

Today Nancy, I and our daughter Chris went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.
This house was built by the wife of the second President of the Winchester Arms & Mfg Co. She was the only heir to the estate as here only daughter died at infancy and her husband died soon after. She had this vision after their deaths that she was to purchase this 160 are farm & buildings. Her vision told here that if she would build continually on the house to appease the spirits for all the deaths that had been caused by the Winchester Rifle that she would live for eternity. She started in 1890 and construction went on 24 hrs a day until she died in 1928. There was a crew of 12 carpenters that worked around the clock. The mansion has 160 rooms 47 fire places & one bathroom. It has many bizarre features such as doors & windows that open onto blank walls, a staircase that goes from floor to ceiling, a door that open outward to an 8 ft. drop off, and beautiful stained glass windows from Tiffany's in New York. She was a woman under 5 Ft. in height with arthritis so most of the stairs risers are only 3 or 4 inch's high. She inherited 30 million and had $1000 a day income. When she died she only had 2 million left. No one was ever in the house other than the servants, carpenters & hired staff. She was very difficult to work for she paid her help $3 cash every day. If any of them questioned what she was doing or anything she would give them their $3 send them out the gate never to return. It is said that the only person to ever come close to entering the house was Pres. Roosevelt. He was reportedly visiting in the area and decided to call on her and on the way to the front door one of the helpers told him if he wanted to see her he needed to go to the servants entrance like everyone else. It upset him and he left never to return. The front door was installed at a cost of $3000 and no one ever used it as she had no guests in the 38 years that she lived there.

Morgan Hill, CA

We are now in Morgan Hill, CA about 40 miles south of Red Wood City. We will stay here and drive the car back and forth to David & Chris's apartment. Yesterday mid morning we left Palm Desert. We traveled west on I-10 & I-210 around the north side of the LA Metro area and on the south side of the San Gabriel Mtns. Lots of traffic. Around the Banning area there are large groups of wind generators in the valley and up the mountains to the north. We then went north on I-5 over the mountain pass and down the other side into the valley where we started seeing irrigated nut groves and farm fields. I guess I am still a farmer at heart because I sure enjoy seeing things growing and people tilling the soil. We stopped in Lost Hills for the night. This morning we turned west on CA 46 toward Paso Robles. As we went west we saw 3 or 4 oil fields that had oil wells about every 100 yd and it looked as if they may have each covered about a square mile. As we traveled on to the west large fields of grape vines began to replace the trees and crops. After about 20 miles we started into the Diablo Mtn. Range were we started seeing cattle. These mountains actually had some grass growing on them where the mountains in the desert seem to only have rocks and small mesquite bushes. At Paso Robles we turned north on US 101, we drove through miles and miles of large fields of grapes. Then we started seeing field after field of vegetables. It looked like they were picking cauliflower, Kohlrabi, peppers and tomatoes. We also saw some fields of onions that were being harvested. This was all in a valley between the Diablo Mtn range to the east and the Santa Lucia mnt. range to the west. I think perhaps it is the Salinas valley. At Salinas 101 turned to the NE through the Santa Cruz Mnts though Gilroy (the garlic capitol of the world) and then Morgan Hill. Form our camp ground we see the Santa Cruz mountains just just a few short miles to the west.

Joshua Tree National Park

Today we drove around to the other side of the mountains behind us for a visit to Joshua Tree National Park. It is on the Mojave desert side where the elevation is 2000 to 5000 feet higher than it is here on the Colorado Desert side. It was about 15 degree's cooler and windier. Joshua Tree is a year round rock climbers paradise.
We didn't know what Joshua trees were so I guess we were expecting to see more of a forest type setting. An example of Joshua trees are shown in one picture you can also see a Joshua tree in the picture of the rock climbers. We saw a lot of Joshua trees and granite rock formations. Duh this is the desert forests don't grow in a desert.

Salton Sea

Today we decided to go south on CA 111 to the Salton Sea. On the way we stopped at the Oasis Date Gardens just south of Thermal, CA. Dates have been grown here in the Coachella Valley since the early part of the century. The date palm trees grow about a foot per year and produce around 250-350 lbs. of dates annually. They start production about year seven and are used for production until approximately 50 years old. At that time they are sold to landscapers due to the fact that they have become so tall that they are dangerous for the workers. The trees have to be hand pollinated and harvested by hand. They do all the trimming and tree maintenance from atop the tree also. The date trees are grown from suckers that are cut from the base of the tree in its first ten years. They can't be grown from seed as the new tree will not produce dates that are the same as the tree that produced the date that the seed was taken from. They plant 50 trees per acre with one of those being a male tree that they use the pollen from to hand pollinate the other 49.
The Salton Sea is on down the road a few miles. The elevation is 227 feet below sea level and cover 360 square miles. The salinity is higher than the Pacific ocean but considerably less than Salt Lake in Utah. It is sustained largely by agricultural drainage and storm runoff. They say it was formed by accident about 100 years ago. The Colorado River broke through an irrigation canal and due to the high volume of water flowing in it took 16 months to stop the flow and divert it back to its original channel. The result was a new lake 45 miles long and 25 miles wide.

Thousand Trails RV Resort Palm Desert, CA

We have been here at Palm Desert since Thur. afternoon. Thousand Trails RV Resort is about 450 RV spaces with towering palm trees lining the streets. Palm Desert, Indio, Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs are located in the Coachella Valley between Joshua Tree National Park and the Santa Rosa mountains. The elevation is very near sea level so it is a tropical desert oasis area. After traveling through the desert from Salome, AZ it is quit a change, however you are still on the desert side of the Santa Rosa mountains. Today we drove south on Rt 74up the desert side of the mountains around to the west side to the mountain town of Idyllwild. It is a tourist town that reminds me a lot of Estes Park, CO. The elevation is about 6000 ft. above sea level. The drive up the desert side of the mountain is rocks dirt and some scrub trees but on the other side you are in tall pines and broad leaf trees with grass valleys that have cattle and horses in them. It really is a striking contrast. From there we took Rt 254 down the west side to Banning, CA located on I-10 about 40 miles west of Palm Desert. The Temp was about 85 degree's when we left this morning and was probably about 70 degree's at Idyllwild and about 90 when we got back here this later this afternoon. Nancy says she hasn't seen any thing out here that would make her want to move from Florida.