SoCal

    We've never felt any more relaxed and comfortable with couchsurfing hosts than we have with Francine and Carl in Bakersfield. We had a nice paella for dinner, chatted, watched Aviator on a large screen, and at breakfast we ate oranges from their own tree in their backyard, sweeter than any oranges in a Canadian supermarket.

    We like "SoCal". That's what some locals call Southern California.

    We cruised eastward from flat Bakersfield on highway 178 and found ourselves almost instantly driving through very high, steep mountain walls, into the Sequoia National Park. The rock faces beside the road were vertical and sometimes even overhanging, as you see in the photo, with a steep drop-off on the downside to a lovely rock creek. 

    The scenery was spectacular all the way to Lake Isabella, where we turned and drove back westward on a tertiary highway 155, from an elevation above 4000 feet, through an hour or more of tight hairpin curves, with speeds only between 20 and 40 kms/hr. It would be a great ride for a motorcycle, but Deborah's inner ear got a real work-out, and she was quite ill before we got back to the flat lands. 

     The landscape changed swiftly and radically, from steep mountains made from rocks with no vegetation, to mountains covered with pine trees, to soft round hills with no trees or brush, but with cows and mules, and with ground squirrels and prairie dogs every few feet, some playing chicken with the truck across the pavement.

    Suddenly we were in completely flat land, driving through fifty miles of orange trees filled with ripe oranges, looking like bushy Christmas trees with bright orange ornaments. 

    Just before dusk we arrived in Visalia, where we met our hosts for the evening, Mary Xavier and her husband Galvani. We had Chinese food for supper, and then just visited for awhile. They're a very nice, newly married couple. Galvani is from Jamaica, and Mary is originally from the Azores, and speaks Portuguese. Her parents also have orange trees with ripe oranges, so we're getting spoiled with delicious citrus today. 

    Next post: Babes in the BIG Woods