October 20, 2013 Hesperia/Victorville CA

We drove from Ridgecrest to Hesperia where we are parked waiting on our friends Gary and Serena to catch up with us.

We are exploring the area and had a chance to go out to where we saw plane storage lot.

It seems that many planes have been "pickled" a term used by the crews that drain the fluids and
seal the plane for storage. According to what I have read some planes maybe returned to service
if needed or purchased to be used in other countries. Seems that the US guidelines have changed and many do not meet noise restrictions for the US.

9/11 force many airlines to ground many planes because air travel ceased and then traffic was slower than normal. Then over time economic conditions grounded some because the planes were not as economical to operate as maybe the newer fleet.

This fleet of planes is located at Southern California Logistics in Victorville which use to be George Air Force Base. The Base closed in 1992 and SCL took up operations as did a new California Correctional facility. Unfortunately, the housing that once housed the military all sit vacant and vandelized and is a haven for drugs,gangs & homeless. I can't imagine why the government  didn't level all the structures.

October 18th Ridgecrest, CA

We've spent a couple days here in Ridgecrest with our friends Jim and Sue.

We met them at Amazon last year and we became fast friends. We enjoyed our visit
ate and ad some drink while taking in the views of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
around Ridgecrest.

We did a few geocaches, but had no idea that there were many long stings of
them with various shapes that Jim showed us on the computer.

I think we could have picked up several hundred if we had wanted and it appears
it would have been pretty easy.

Saw a wild Horse and Burro adoption center on BLM land. Was very surprised
how tame many of the horses seemed as well as how healthy they all looked.

We leave this morning headed to Hesperia, Ca  which isn't but about 90 miles
from Ridgecrest, so our drive will be a short one.

October 14, 2013 Ridgecrest, CA

We left our camp this morning in Groveland, CA and followed HWY 120 which took us thru Yosemite Ntl Park so the first 60 miles was on park roads where the speed was on
 an average of 45 MPH, still allowed us to take more pictures. It seems that they had a snow storm the day before, so on some hillsides are covered with snow.

We drove straight thru to Ridgecrest where we will meet our friends Sue and Jim.

The next few days we'll visit with Sue and Jim before we head on to Hesperia, CA where we'll be meeting our friends Gary and Serena.

The pictures are mostly from Yosemite. Got a chance to capture some fall colors too.

October 6th, 2013 Groveland CA - Yosemite Ntl Park

We traveled from Santa Rosa to Groveland CA via hwy 120 a twisty 2 lane road where
we climbed about 2000 feet above sea level. I wish I could say it was all pretty but
unfortunately the last section of our trip was thru forrest that had burned in the Rim
Fire that burned thru August.

The RIM Fire consumed over 257,000 acres of forrest and 402 square miles. This
fire follows a fire that took place in 1987 where over 140,000 acres were replanted
unfortunately all consumed with the fire in August which was started by a illegal
camp fire.

The fire was considered the 3rd worst fire in California since 1932 when statistics
were viable.

Over 5000 firefighters worked to contain the fire where temperatures exceeded
1500 degrees causing trees to explode like fireworks.

We took in the Iron Door Saloon and watched a few locals, more visitors and heard a nice band on Saturday.

Of course we did drive thru Yosemite and took in sights from the car since the park was closed due the brainy government.

September 30, 2013 Santa Rosa, CA

We traveled from San Francisco to Santa Rosa to see my cousin KC. WOW seeing KC in less
than 12 months when it had been many years since last seeing her before.

We visited, took in some sights and ate some good food.

The best was getting to visit getting caught up with each other.

The maybe most exciting thing was Bill was getting to mark ZIP LINE off his bucket list.

He and KC signed up with Sonoma Canopy Tours(http://sonomacanopytours.com) to ZIP over the top of coastal Redwoods
some 800 feet in the air.

Bill said it was a challenge being able to ZIP from platform to platform and mostly getting on and off
the platforms with 9 others.

There was no way I was going to do this since I hate heights.

So instead I took a drive since the Zip tour was over 2.5 hours long.

I managed to travel a small country road to find myself looking at the California coast line
and seeing some wildlife, unfortunately I missed the bobcat that crossed the road as he was moving
on not stopping for a photo op moment as this black creature did :)