Wednesday, December 11, 2019

December 9-11, 2019 Bakersfield- Ridgecrest, California

Almost 60 and partly sunny when we arrived. It is wonderful.

We are parked at the Orange Grove RV park. It is literally in an orange grove and they are ripe now. Makes me feel like I am in Florida. Or southern California. We can pick a few bags of oranges too. Fresh squeezed OJ for the holidays. Oranges, a moon and orange tree and a flower garden here.  

Sunset tonight. Complete with a pink curly cue. 

Sunset tonight after spending the day driving around scenic (not) Bakersfield all day shopping to resupply before we head into the desert. Our Christmas tree is a wreath I got at a 99 cent store today. On it are some blinking start lights I got last year for my Saturn costume for the fruit cake festival, a beautiful ornament I got on the pine needle ornament exchange and a beaded octopus I got in Bandon. I always try to get a local ornament each year. I take them back to Colorado and some day when we have a real tree again I can them on it and remember our trip. 

Good bye Orange Grove Park. It feels so warm and spring  like here. There was still some fog in the valleys when we left. We saw this lake in the distance, but when we got closer realized it was a solar farm. 

Rolling golden hills with oak trees on the way.  Fish rocks on the way to the  Trona Pinnacles. 

Crazy looking memorial along the road by the Fish Rocks.  We came to Ridgecrest to see the Trona Pinnacles. There are over 500 of these tufa or calcium carbonate spires are spread out over a 14 square mile area mile across the Searle Lake basin up to 140 feet tall. They were formed when this area was under 640 of water when Searle Lake was in a chain of interconnected lakes flowing from the Owens Valley to Death Valley.

We took a walk through the southern part of the Trona Pinnacles. Snow on  Telescope Peak in Death Valley.

John overlooking some pinnacles. These  tufa towers were formed when water with calcium bubbled up under a lake and the calcium formed the calcium carbonate towers.  

Tufa tower Trona Pinnacles under a cloud that looks like ocean waves.  

Trona Pinnacles. 

Cool clouds over the Trona Pinnacles.

Sunset reflected. Sunset on crenelated desert mountains.






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