Shield's Date Farm

On our latest cross country trek, my sister, Mona, suggested we stop to visit the date farm in Indio.  Around noon, as we neared Indio, where we planned to stay the night, I googled "date farm Indio" and immediately found their site:  Shield's Date Garden  I plugged the address into our GPS (isn't technology wonderful?) and we arrived just as their cafe closed at 2:30 p.m.  So we weren't able to get lunch, but we did get one of their famous date milkshakes.

Even though the cafe was closed, the gift shop was teeming with customers, and they had a counter we got the milkshake (which was delicious!)  

 The weather was ideal for outdoor eating.  Sunny and high 80's but cooler and nice in the shade.

One of the many biblical statues that are dispersed throughout the garden depicting most of the parables of the New Testament.

The gardens are beautiful with wide stone paths through a grove of date and citrus trees, and other tropical vegetation.  A lot of the plants are marked with names and species, which I always find interesting.

They show the "sex life of the date tree" at a movie, but we skipped that and just wandered through the gardens while we enjoyed our milkshake.  Definitely a nice rest stop on a long trip!

Trucks and Traffic

Every time we make the trip from our home in Washington State to our home in Georgia, we swear that we are going to "take it easy" and do a leisurely 3,000+ mile trip (is that even possible?)  Then we set out to do a quicker trip than the last grueling trip.  So we woke up early (like 2 a.m. early) for our latest trip South.  So when we came into Los Angeles around 8 p.m., we realized we could get through LA when there wasn't much traffic.  It was basically us and the trucks as we headed over the Grapevine into LA. We were happy the next day we had made the effort to bypass traffic, but it was a tough day!  Here are some comments on sharing the road with trucks:

1. It seems like there are more trucks on the road.  Like LOTS more.  But I count everything (a sign of mental illness I hear) and I've been counting trucks per mile for years.  I start at a mile marker counting how many trucks are coming toward us between that marker and the next one. After 10 or 15 miles, I can extrapolate an average of trucks on the road (a very unscientific poll). In past years, on the open road in Texas on I-10 or I-20, 10 was about average.  This year's count was around 6 or 7.  However, in the cities, there are definitely more trucks at all times of the day (and night).
2. When it's raining, the weather is a LOT worse when you pass a truck. Ditto for snow!  There is usually more water coming up off the road than that coming down from the sky and the cloud of water or snow can blind you!
3. Snobbishness is a human trait, so I began to wonder if among truck drivers they evaluate each other based on condition of the truck, load they're carrying, etc.  For instance, a three trailer truck should get more points than one simple enclosed trailer.
   And a load of 5,000+ pitiful chickens stacked 20' high by 20' wide by 50' long in cages where they have about one cubic foot of space each or a load of smelly bleating sheep has to rate lower than a load of shiny new tractors - or a load of new cars.  Speaking of car haulers - where on earth are all those cars going?  We see about one a mile going in both directions.
4.  I suppose speed capability is high on the status scale for trucks - nothing like being trapped behind a truck in the left lane gradually passing a truck that is going about a mile an hour slower.
5. And a colorful sleeper cab personalized with information about the driver has to count for something.

So after jockeying with trucks all the way down I-5 until we were about rummy from 15 hours of driving, we come to a decision where the GPS directs us to take the truck route and we mindlessly obeyed.  What were we thinking?  An opportunity to drive without trucks for a while, and here we were at 9 p.m. already dead dog tired and hanging out with all the trucks on a truck route. 

And motorcycle riders - yikes!  Trapped in 8 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic on I-10 around Pasedena during rush hour on Friday night, with cars darting into lane changes at every opportunity, suddenly a loud noise on our right alerted us to a motorcycle coming up in the median between lanes.  Not just one - many!  There isn't enough money on earth to get us on our bike in LA traffic anyway, but going between cars is just plain foolhardy!  We fully expected to have traffic come to a complete halt while they scraped one or more of them off the road.  Fortunately for the commute that Friday night, they all made it safely.

 

So trucks and motorcycles make interstate driving interesting, but without the interstates, we probably wouldn't even consider making that long trip twice a year.  More trip notes and pictures to follow.

Our Annual Migration

This year we took the "Northern Route" on our trip south.  That involved going north first to see the kids in Eastern Washington.  We got there the day of the first frost of the year, so we helped a little bit in the harvest of a gigantic crop of tomatoes.

We all helped, but Tony and Tina did the majority of the work while we amused ourselves feeding overripe tomatoes and squash to the chickens.

In the end, we had gathered a whole box of green tomatoes to let ripen over the next few months

and another box of red tomatoes for salsa and canning immediately.

We headed south from Tonasket, following the Columbia River

from Vantage to Tri-Cities, enjoying sites of fishermen on the river and lots of vineyards and orchards between the road and the river.

and amber waves of grain where the river was too far for irrigation.

As we neared Boise, we could see that we were going to get some real weather to travel through:

For nearly a hundred miles, we were under the storm, with driving rain and high winds.  Colder on the other side of the front.

We even saw some fresh snow on the mountains.

Next stop:  Salt Lake City - Gavin was happy to see us!

Marcus wasn't too sure about us at first, but warmed up after awhile.

Gavin and I helped his Mom, Anne, move plants in her flower beds while Ron and Cam watched the Husky game, so we all had a great afternoon.

On to Iowa, where Ron has two brothers.  We had a great visit with them also - lots of poker for the guys and dice games for all of us while we caught up on family news.

Ron and I spent one morning helping Dale repair one of his fences.
We were back into 80's during the day, so we worked in the morning while it was relatively cool and breezy.

Dale had done some preliminary work clearing away weeds.  He and Ron discussed the plan first.

Then we started digging holes and packing dirt around posts and nailing up the wire.

We finished the whole line in about two hours and then headed back to play some more cards and dice.

We were happy to be back in the land of low gas prices - this was the lowest we found in Missouri.

It got warmer and warmer as we left Missouri, traveled through Illinois, and then into Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama.  It was downright hot when we arrived back at the Georgia house on Friday afternoon.  We turned the A/C on, I got the TV's hooked up, and worked my internet trapline - we can tackle the poke trees and assorted other weeds tomorrow!  Good to be back in the balmy air of Southwest Georgia!

Our Theme Park Trip Across the USA

This was a quick trip between our winter homes in Florida and Georgia and our home base in Washington State.  Usually, I have my husband, Ron, who is also my chauffeur driving me and I can take in the sites and take pictures.  This year, we were driving two cars, so I became fully aware of how great it is to have someone to drive me.  The total trip is 3400 miles, but we got a break for a couple of days when we stopped in Georgia to put things to bed there.  

It was much like being at Disneyworld and being whisked through various scenes with brief glimpses of life therein.  We started out with summer-like conditions and flowers in bloom along the roadways.  The trees still glowed with spring green, but the temperatures were 80+ so it was definitely shorts and air conditioning time.

As we moved north through Alabama and Tennessee, the temperatures were still very warm, but some of the trees were just starting to leaf out.  By Missouri, while still warm, the red bud trees were just in bud, but the grass in the fields was getting green and some fields had been turned over by farmers ready to plant.

Oh, boy, back to late winter in northern Iowa.  We saw flocks and flocks of big white birds.  We weren't close enough to see if they were white pelicans or white swans or white geese and I couldn't get Ron's attention to stop to look.  

In South Dakota, the roads were still bare, but piles of snow lined the roadways and most of the fields were still covered in snow.  We did see huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes - presumably already migrated back to their summer homes.

I saw a great sign that gave me comic relief from the grueling drive in S. Dakota.  I actually saw it TWICE, so it wasn't just a mistake:

DICK'S BODY SHOP

24-HOUR TOE SERVICE

Just what kind of a body shop is Dick running, I wondered.  My nails could use a trim, maybe we should stop?

Then as we entered Wyoming, we returned to full winter when we hit real snow!  Blowing and drifting snow, and temperatures in the teens.  They must put something on the roads, because at the beginning of the snow zone, the roads had piles of wet slush.  A big truck boiled by us, throwing this slush onto our windshields at one point and it immediately froze solid.  We had to pull onto the shoulder to clean them before we could even continue.

In white out conditions, we passed through Wyoming and part of Montana.  After hundreds of miles of white knuckle driving, we landed in Missoula, just 500 miles from home and stopped for the night.  It was such a pleasure to get all the way home by about 2 p.m. and find sunshine and warm temperatures for our unloading. Back in spring, my favorite season!

"Be it ever so humble, there is really no place like home!"