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.