Sequoias and Peacocks

Not much has been going on the last few days. Just north of San Francisco was still not warm enough for me so I went into the San Joaquin Valley in California. It is always sunny here and the temperatures have been in the high 80s/lower 90s during the day, and I only have to sleep with one blanket. So, I am warming up nicely.

John and I spent a LOT of time in the valley when we were trucking. I always loved it, partly because of the weather, but also because of the yummy mexican food, as well as the vast fields of almost every kind of produce you can think of. John used to joke that California was the "land of fruit and nuts." And it literally is, everything from cherries, to bell peppers, to almonds, to olives. Is an olive considered to be a fruit? It grows on trees, and has pits/seeds, so I'm thinking it should be considered a fruit. When we were not taking back a load of wine (lots of grapevines here!), we were taking fresh produce back to the midwest.

Mexican and Midwest are showing a red line underneath, like I have them misspelled, because I don't have them capitalized. See how much you learn when you try to write? I have learned a lot from this blog, including how to spell Sequioa and Joaquin. I have to look things up so I get my facts right and my spelling correct. I will have to blog about the war defense structure built around the San Franciso Bay area that I stumbled upon while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (see all the capital letters in that sentence), but I will blog about that later.

Back to the title, Sequoias and Peacocks.

I thought I was fairly close to Yosemite National Park, so I went yesterday. It was a lot farther than I thought. I kept taking these little side roads looking for a place to camp, so I probably added at least 20 miles to my trip. Anyway, late in the afternoon, I finally made it into the park and went to the area called the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.

http://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/mg.htm

It is impossible to describe how big these trees are. It was getting closer and closer to darkness, so I didn't go walk on the trail, and couldn't get close enough to hug one. Plus I would have had to find someone to take a picture of me hugging a tree, so there is nothing in my photos for perspective, but believe me, I have never seen trees that big. Since these are the "biggest living things on the planet", it is no wonder most of us haven't seen a tree that big in person.

There was a choice of three campsites (that I could find) in or near the park. The only one I was willing to stay in was full, and the other two were way to "primitive" for me. Although I LOVE living outdoors, I highly value running water, electricity, and people that aren't "into" primitive camping. So, I'm driving out of the park (87 miles to the nearest city), in pitch darkness, 35 miles per hour on mountainous two lane roads. I kept seeing people parked at the side of the road, and I was wondering what in the hell they were doing. It finally occurred to me they were star gazing. There are no streetlights in the park, and buildings and people are few and far between, so it was perfect. I had to stop because I have been trying to find a place dark enough (while still having running water, electricity, and not "tree hugging" people) to see the stars. It was one of the prettiest sights I have seen. No pictures of it unfortunately.

On to peacocks. I was at a fruit stand a couple of days ago, and saw a field with seven peacocks walking around munching. Well, today, I stopped at that same stand to check GPS on the phone, and I look out the window and there was a peacock, walking over to see if I had anything yummy for him to eat.  I didn't have anything, and I am kind of scared of birds anyway. So, from the safety of my truck, I got a picture.

Ok, enough rambling. Ya'll have a good day and night.