The Wide Blue Sky...

…and the sea of dry grass and oak trees.

We put  Ozzie in the back seat of OilMan's Ford Fusion and set off  for my brother's house  near San Diego this morning, planning to stop half way at a hotel that takes dogs in Paso Robles. Our scenic drive down the coast was rendered less scenic by numerous traffic jams. until we passed the turn-off to the Monterey Peninsula. 

We stopped to eat our tomato sandwiches at a city park in Gilroy where kids played soccer, young people congregated and a man in a straw hat pedaled his bike pulling a small freezer full of delicious popsicles…a common sight in Hispanic neighborhoods. Although the thermometer in the car said 90 degrees, it was quite pleasant in the shade where Ozzie made friends with a tiny chihuahua who seemed to fancy him. A good blip except for the fact that my camera was in the car.

Today, John Steinbeck  would not recognize the Salinas Valley home to his family saga East of Eden,  carpeted with verdant green fields known as the "salad bowl of the nation" copiously watered  by overhead sprinklers, the spray wafting off on the stiff  breeze and evaporating into the heated atmosphere. The contrast with the surrounding Santa Lucia Mountains, , was striking, especially where the lettuce fields rose steeply up the hillside to meet the parched white grass. I banished thoughts of my morning's 30 second shower and buckets of  warm-up water from my mind.

The amount of farm equipment used to tend these fields and harvest the produce is staggering. Whole queues of combines, harvesters, tractors and trailers bearing porta potties waited by a vast field of lettuce accompanied by a tank of petrol to fuel them. A  line of tractors was silhouetted against the sky at the top of a hill. A line of migrant workers toiled in another field  beneath them harvesting tomatoes. 

The fertile valley gave way to white hills and oaks, the San Ardo Oil Fields bristling with oil derricks looking like grasshoppers and finally, Camp Roberts, an abandoned army base so polluted that it can't be used  quietly moldering away in the heat, once white paint peeling from hundreds of buildings housing barracks, hangars, target ranges and officers' quarters.


We are now ensconced in our hotel room where the air-conditioned temperature is arctic, although the thermostat reads 70, looking forward to a nice dinner at a restaurant in town where we have eaten often before.