Traveling on Sunday

We usually try to NOT be on the road on Sunday, preferring to keep it a day of rest. But, our next campground was an estimated 6+ hour trip (424 miles) and, unless we're traveling with my brother, we don't drive that far in a day! So... we joined our church family in the DFW area via livestream for the early service (9:30am central time, 7:30am local time) and, after unhooking and dumping our tanks, got on the road by about 10am Sunday morning.

We also try to NOT have to fill up with diesel while in California... I had considered a detour to take us into Nevada to get fuel, but then realized that burning a hundred gallons of fuel to save $0.70-0.90/gallon was probably foolish!

However...

...spending $3.569/gallon seems extreme. $0.22 of additional taxes were tacked on 11/1... guess we should have filled up in California before November! Oh, that's right, we didn't make it *in* to California until after the beginning of November...

I think the area that we were driving through is called the "Central Valley" of California. It was very agricultural... and evidently there was a ballot issue on water use in the latest election as there were signs all along I-5 like, "Does growing food waste water?" or "Crops grow where water flows" or "Dam or Train" (I just looked that up and it seems that there was a proposal to divert funds from a bullet train construction to build or improve water storage facilities) - I haven't found anything that indicates that there was anything specific on the November ballot, but maybe I'm just not finding it...

We used a resource that we have called "Days End" that has a listing of places (other than Walmarts!) for overnight boondocking - it is produced out of the Escapees group to which we belong. Many (most?) of the Walmarts in the Pacific northwest and west (California) seem to NOT want overnight stays. The Days End directory indicated a couple of potential places near Kettleman City, CA, which was a little over half way between Ponderosa campground and Soledad Canyon - so we chose to stop at Bravo Farms (or BravoLand) for the night.

We went inside the gift store/restaurant to ask permission to stay...one of the displays was a slice of a Giant Sequoia. The information says:

Giant Sequoias invoke an awe inspiring, ant-like perspective in every visitor that walks the forests where they grow. The largest of the Sequoias are as tall as an average 26-story building, and their diameters exceed the width of many city streets. The oldest living Sequoias were 1,000 years old when Christ was born, making them nearly 3,000 years old today! They've seen civilizations come and go, survived countless fires and long periods of drought, and continue to grow, inspiring generations of admirers.

This log section came from a Giant Sequoia tree that was blasted down on private land using dynamite in the 1950's. In that era, logger sought for the best heartwood and only utilized the bottom 50-90 feet of the tree, leaving the top parts of the trees right where they fell. Amazingly, this cross section of log came from over 100' in the air before the tree was blasted down. Each growth ring of a tree corresponds to a single year of growth. Therefore the age of this tree can be determined by counting the total number of growth rings and adding the number of years since the tree died. Using these facts, it was determined that this part of the tree is over 2,000 years old. The tags on the log denote growth rings that grew in the same year as various significant world events. The viewer will note the conspicuous absence of tagged growth rings from the 5th to the 15th centuries. That period of time produced few significant events in world history. one can see why that era has come to be known more affectionately as 'The Dark Ages'.

Kettleman City is proud to preserve this piece of WORLD HISTORY and display it for our guests to see and enjoy!

Side note: I don't know what "blasting" a tree down means (I did find this: https://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm08672325/)... and... I think I have heard that tree rings are not necessarily representative of a year per ring.

Tags designating different historic events...

214 BC Great Wall of China, 197 BC Roman Empire Reigns, 44 BC Julius Caesar dies, 4 BC Birth of Christ

1280 AD Gunpowder invented, 1492 AD Discovery of America, 1665 AD England Great Plague, 1776 AD American Independence, 1861 AD American Civil War, 1914 AD World War I, 1939 AD World War II, 1952 AD Tree cut down

For perspective of how big it was... there is Dwayne in front of it!

Milk from happy California cows - I guess they give regular, lemon, orange cream, strawberry, coffee, root beer float, and eggnog flavors of milk!

In the children's play area...

"Used Cows For Sale"!

More of the children's play area... the "grass" is the type that doesn't need mowing...

Over in the corner where the kids were playing was a sand box area.

Parked in the lot for the night... unfortunately the spaces aren't quite long enough for Miss Doozie *and* the Jeep, so we disconnected for the night.

We also got dinner (to-go) in the Bravo Farms shop - this is on a *large* dinner plate - I don't think I've ever seen such a huge leg quarter! We shared the "BBQ Sampler" that included 1/4 rack of ribs (for Dwayne) and 1 leg quarter (for me).

Since we made more than half the journey on Sunday, we have less than 200 miles to complete the journey on Monday!