Today's move only took us about 120 miles from San Juan Bautista to Paso Robles traveling along Hwy 101 - the King's Highway, El Camino Real. It is so named as it approximates the road that connected the 21 missions established by the Spanish along a 600 mile Pacific Coast line, each about 30 miles apart. Back in the very early 1900s, the Women's Federated Clubs decided to mark this trail with bells on shepherd hooks. Before they completed the task they fell apart and others including the State of California have added to or replaced what once existed. There are now 555 of them. It was fun watching for them as we traveled the road today.However it wasn't especially easy to take a photo of them as we moved along at 55 miles an hour. But I did get this one
Notice all the greenery in the background - those are grape vines. We learned when we got into the campground that this county is well known for its wineries. In fact, there are 32,000 acres of vineyards and 130 vineyards offering wine tastings!! "The diverse soil that is riddled with ancient sea fossils yields remarkable quality and complexity" which is, according to a flyer given to us at the campground office, the reason this is such a great growing area.
That is not the only thing we saw growing while traveling today. We were very aware of huge fields of strawberries where workers were actively picking and packing.
Most of the trip we were traveling through a wide flat valley between two sets of mountains and the land was filled with a variety of planted fields - some still in the process of being planted, some with plants just getting started, and others very green with evidence of something being picked.
Some land owner obviously hit the jackpot (or I assume that is what happened). We saw what seemed like hundreds of oil pumpers actively moving up and down. This is but a few in that one area.
The foothills of the mountains seemed to get closer and closer to us so far less flatland as we neared our destination
But finally we saw this sign on a hill - home for the next several days
Once we were checked in and had set up, both the Foulke's and us had a very late lunch. Then after they did some shopping we spent some time making plans for the weekend here including making reservations for tours at Hearst Castle on Saturday.
Bette and I enjoyed a great game of Qwirkle together and then watched the stars and full moon come out before calling it a night.
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