Visit and tour of Woodbridge Winery

Driving up through the San Joaquin Valley was interesting and boring. Mile after mile of Almond Orchards (had no clue there were so many!), grape vines (I expected this), bee hives at the ends of the rows (should have expected this, but didn't) and the unexpected smell...manure. Suddenly we came upon several miles of feed lots of cattle. I'd bet there were up to a million cattle kept in fenced areas to eat, eat, eat, definitely not free range. Bet that's where they're fed all the hormones we hear about. I was so busy looking, I forgot to take a picture. Just as well.

Because of all our car problems and delays, we decided we had to go straight through California...LA to Oregon.

In reading the brochures we picked up, Rick discovered that the Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Winery was in Modesto. That's one of our favorite everyday wines. Since we missed going up the Pacific Coast Highway, we decided to take at least a short side tour.



Let's take this Airstream to the Winery.


Let's visit.


Early spring for the vines.


These are special vines. Only Zinfandel grows on vines which aren't on wires. Some of these plants are quite old we learned on the tour.


This is a HUGE operation. Each of these vats hold about 216,800 gallons. There were dozens of them.


These vats are at least twice the size of the last picture. Only a small portion of them are in the picture. Look at the cars compared to the vats. The employees rode around the facility on bicycles it's so large.


This is the bottling and corking machine. It bottles 400/minute. That makes 50,000 cases per day. That's a LOT of wine...start drinking!!!



These storage vats are made of Redwood. Also old. The guide said that they do not flavor the wine at all. But that they are good for the wine because they breathe.



These are the Oak casks to produce the oak flavor. Only a small portion of them are pictured. The winery has so much space in this cooler, they rent space to other wineries to place their casks here to age.


It was an interesting visit and tour. Well worth the time.

Now on to the Redding Elks Club where we enjoyed visiting with the members.

Leaving LA

As we leave LA and Southern CA, these are all typical sights.


Many layers of bridges. I missed a couple of better ones...not quick enough.


See...we were here...which lane are we supposed to be in? Don't forget...we are in the Suburban towing a 34' trailer, luckily about noon on Monday.


This is as close as we got to downtown LA. See the brownish haze?


Rows and rows of hills.


Barren hillsides.



Lots of traffic traveling North from LA. On the long long down grades, the trucks can only go 35mph!


Down, down to the fertile San Joaquin Valley. Notice the rows and rows of crops. We drove all the way to Lodi, CA.


Flag City RV Park was brand new and nice..had WiFi, too. Think I did one of the earlier posts from here. Rick said the shower house was really nice, too.

Easter Dinner at Karen and Tom Richards

As I look over my pictures, I see I didn't get any pictures of Karen and Tom or their son Kreig. Must have been too busy visiting, and eating a great prime rib dinner. Thanks again, Karen. It was great!


This is the front of their house.


Their back yard and garden.


This is Tom's shed and workbench. He's got all the tools, and is a great craftsman. He really enjoys his time in here since he's retired.


The Nixon Library is in Placentia, CA, which is the same town that Karen and Tom live in. Karen took us on a tour of the town. It was great to visit with them.

Crystal Cathedral

The Elks Club we stayed at was in Garden Grove, CA. So we searched out the Crystal Cathedral. Impressive. Beautiful. It also happened to be Easter Sunday.





Inside there was a Hispanic Service going on. Lovely. Great singers.





Christ was housed in a special room at the base of the tower.




This smiling Jesus was beautifully done. There were quite a few other bronze statues in the beautiful gardens on the grounds.



Numerous fountains on the grounds, also.

Barstow, CA

Leaving Henderson, we had to drive past Las Vegas. We could see the Strip and it's Casino's from the highway, but, no, we didn't stop. Big cloud of smog over the city. Looked brown. :-(



Great views of the California mountains on the way to Barstow.


Desert Springs Campground was up on a hillside. Not a bad one really.


Peggy Sue's Diner is another one on Route 66 in Barstow. The front of it is a jukebox. It's got lots of ads up on I40.

Boulder City, NV

Sorry for the big delay in my postings, but, no WiFi. Valerie and Nick's had a problem, so we devoted our time to the kids... so much fun!!

This isn't the best picture...but it does show the new road that is being built over the Hoover Dam. Therefore, one lane traffic, busy, busy. Also it was dusk.





This garden was in the Boulder City Elks Club for the RVers




We thought we would go back to Hoover Dam to the Visitors Center. Drove that way and encountered a long long line of traffic on that road. Sigh! Guess we can't go today, because we discovered last night that the heater on the hot water tank had burned it's circuits. Both of us had smelled something burning in the bathroom. There was a Camping World in Henderson, NV, just down the road. Turned around, hooked up, went to Camping World, they fit us into their schedule and had quite a time replacing the old hot water tank and circuits.

By 6:30 pm we were on the road again. Decided to go to Barstow, CA


The last Indian Casino in Nevada, just on the California border.

More Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam

As we walked and rode, there were other interesting sights along the way. From the bus we did see mule deer and baby and one female elk grazing.



For example, this snowman!!




The shadows were changing all the time as evening arrived.




See the moon reflected in the puddle and in the sky? And the ice to the right on the puddle?



After seeing my pictures as I downloaded then when we got back to the Airstream, I was so disappointed in them. They seemed so washed out. We went back in the morning and I took more pictures. We noticed that the colors are not as brilliant as our minds make them.



We did drive to the Hoover Dam and then Boulder City Elks for the night. We thought that we would leave the trailer and return to the Dam in the morning for the tour.