Salinas Valley

Ozzie loves Donna our English dog /house sitter . She's a friend of our friend and house cleaner, Caroline. It was a bit of a flurry getting out of the house this morning but we left knowing that we were leaving everything in good hands.

I used to drive from Berkeley down the Monterey Peninsula to visit my mother when she lived in Pacific Grove. After OilMan retired he often went with me. The whole drive today was a testament to the fact that adding more lanes to existing freeways is not a long term solution to traffic woes in this state. For one thing, we can't even maintain the roads we already have which are in woeful shape. For another, while the new lanes are under construction the roads are more dangerous than ever and by the time they are finished, the population has increased so much that the roads are just as crowded as ever. OilMan and I had a desultory discussion about possible alternative solutions, but weren't able to come up with much.

The Salinas Valley is Steinbeck (East of Eden) country, also known as 'the salad bowl of the nation'. They are either harvesting or planting right now, and  it was fascinating to me to see all the farm equipment and all the farm workers arrayed in the fields. There were mobile picnic tables with umbrellas over them as well as mobile portable potties. There were harvesters with huge conveyor belts cutting cauliflower and farm workers picking lettuce and strawberries. Other workers eight abreast were sitting in little chairs being towed about a foot above the ground by a tractor. We think they were planting something but we were too far away to see. I certainly don't aspire to be Dorothea Lange, but I was seized with a desire to be able to photograph these large fields and the agribusinesses who own them at work.

We are now established in our hotel in Paso Robles...the same one we always stay in. In the course of looking for a new place to eat dinner, OilMan discovered that there is an Arndt Cellars tasting room. Paso Robles is an upcoming California wine region and since our name is Arndt, we decided to go check it out. Don Arndt was quite a character and gave us lots of wine to taste in addition to a bottle of wine. Since we also bought several bottles, we should have some to give to both sons (of the same surname) and a couple of really unusual rosés for ourselves....

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