California in the Spring

There is nothing quite as desolate as driving across Nevada.  The Joshua trees were in bloom and they were quite pretty.  We always say if Nevada had decent soil and water it would produce so much!  I guess it will have to wait to be resurrected!

Las Vegas

This is about as close as I want to be to the strip.  Even the billboards were racy!

 

These are the hills around Tehachapie.  I have seen the windmills in Wyoming but there were thousands of them here!  Bryan's shirt is reflecting off the window I was shooting from.

This is a very nice looking sale barn near Visalia, CA called Overland.  It is a far cry from our local auction barn!

We went to visit a calf farm in Hanford, CA.  They have 90,000 mostly Holstein calves there at any given time.  They pick them up from the local dairy's when the calves are 6-24 hours old.  They spend their first 70 days in these little stalls.  There are slats in the floor so the poop drops through and is easily cleaned away.  They are fed 2-3 times a day depending on the age of the calf.  It was amazing to see the workers drive the tractor along the row and put a bottle in each holder on the pen.  He was fast!

The feedlot was about 4-5 blocks long on one side.  The pens were so well kept and most of them had a shade in the middle.  It was a very well run operation.

The highlight of the trip was to stop at an enormous fruit stand just outside Bakersfield, CA.  They had more varieties of oranges and grapefruits than I had ever seen!  We bought strawberries, asparagus, pineapple grapefruit, blood oranges, and of course peanut brittle. ( I looked for the  brittle bush but didn't see it;)

The reason we went to California in the first place was to go to a Western Video Market auction in Visalia, California.  It was held at a Holiday Inn Motel there.  It is a smaller auction compared to the one in Reno, NV in July.  It was good to see friends we see only there and meet people that I only get to talk to on the phone.  We had dinner with Ellington Peak and friends the night before.  It is always entertaining to spend more than half an hour at dinner like we do at home.  Drinking brings a whole new experience to dinner.  And of course there is always coffee after dinner too.  I think I will appreciate our quiet dinners in under an hour!