It was grape harvesting time. Everywhere we went were gigantic hoppers and other weird equipment on wheels. I grabbed this shot while returning from a second failed attempt to find an open welder.
I liked this sign for the Country Cafe, located a few miles down the road in Lockeford. The little cowboy and cowgirl looked kind of cheery, propping up the sign at the intersection of 12 and 26. We made it to Lockeford, but not the Country Cafe. By now we were looking for a welder to weld our broken exhaust manifold back together.
DSS means “department of social security” to me, or somesuch. I’m sure that’s not what they meant by this. Neither of us is any the wiser, but we thought the levitating tank was worth a second look. :)
I gather that the waterways here are Little Potato Slough and the Mokelumne River, and I think this is the river. Terminous is a tiny place where goods used to packed for shipping on the water. Now, there are more campers than occupants (there’s a large marina and KOA just opposite Westgate Landing).
While here, I finally understood the significance of levees. The levee here has a bird’s eye view of the campground and it’s surreal to see a river carried higher than the ground. Breaking levees in this region would be bad.
After a day or so of parking lot “camping” we tried out a little campground at Terminous. Westgate Landing turned out to be a lovely, mostly quiet oasis which was one of two main campgrounds we called “home” for the duration. Right off highway 12, it was convenient and cheap. We’re looking back to highway 12 here, with the bridge to the far left and Mount Diablo in the distance.
The trip down to San Joaquin county was not nice. We arrived at a rest area with space too early to go to sleep, really, and figured on catching one further down south. Didn’t happen. They were all full to the brim, or closed. So we finally got to Camp Flying J in the small wee hours.
A few days later, we were in Stockton, shopping for boxes. A crop duster flew overhead.
It’s time to start sharing the pictures from our monstrous trip in August.
We hadn’t even made it to 299 when we had to pull over; we’d lost the cap from our sewer. (The one that keeps the nasty stuff inside, as there’s always something left over when you close the valves.) Don pulled over to affix the spare, and all the horses came to look at the gigantic mobile brick that is our home.
Here’s the view from below the bridge. When the trains go by, the metal seems to sing, and dozens of little lizards ran away in panic. The reflections and shadows were pretty neat, too.
This is Sims Bridge, the CCC bridge I was talking about in my photo essay a couple of days ago. Here, you’re looking towards the railroad which from time to time would send a long freight train spinning down its tracks. The bridge was quite a feat back in its day.
Raindrops on a pine tree. They hung there like little jewels, looking enormously pretty. So I took pictures.
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Grid Focus by Derek Punsalan 5thirtyone.com.
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