Our usual MO when leaving the desert is to stop overnight at the Wasco, CA Elks and then head home. That makes for two long driving days. This year we decided to break the drive home into three segments, stopping at two different Harvest Hosts locales. Remember, Harvest Hosts don't normally have hookups. Our first choice of an overnight stop was booked, so we looked further, and spent Sunday night at The Dam Ranch in Tehachapi, CA.
The Dam Ranch is a 22-acre horse/goat rescue and family ranch nestled in the Tehachapi mountains. Getting there involved driving on rural roads that eventually ended up being just mud -- kinda sketchy! Parking was in a large, flat dirt pasture. One other (teardrop) RV arrived before us, but we saw no one.
As we drove up-up-up the hill from the desert, we were aghast to see patchy snow on the north-facing Tehachapi Mtns! I don't know the elevation, but over 4,000'. We call this cut-through-the-mountains the Tehachapi wind-tunnel, as the wind has been known to rip across here (which is why it has lots of wind turbines, as you see, above and below).
I guess we were in the clouds, too! 'Cause suddenly the sun vanished.
With an occasional ray reaching toward earth.
This was the view from our dinette window.
And a sunset photo, too.
By the time we were set up in the pasture, the temp was already in the 30's; we planned for a cold night. Our hosts were out of town, so we missed seeing them. The animals must have been in the barn to stay warm, too. As it was, at bedtime, we pulled in both slides, threw another blanket on the bed, kept the catalytic propane heater on high, and hoped for the best. Come morning, the outside temp was a frigid 18°, with a cool 48° inside. Time to turn on the furnace! Everything out there was covered in thick frost. We didn't tarry, wanting to get to the valley and warmer temps. If the weather'd been better, our take on this host would be different. All we did was stop overnight here.
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From Tehachapi, on Monday morning we drove down into the San Joaquin Valley to the little town of Coalinga, CA, abutting the range of low green hills called Guijarral Hills. Off the beaten path, for sure. Our Harvest Host was the R.C. Baker Memorial Museum, located pretty much downtown ... with its faithfully restored 1934 Richfield Service Station, below.
"The R.C. Baker Museum is a collective memory of a community that helped fuel the American century. It is about people who worked the land and created a spirit that has survived in both the good and bad times; it is about us. Five rooms of artifacts with local history, especially relating to the Oil Industry in Coalinga's past. Restored Richfield station, antique cars, and Western artifacts."
Cool beans!
Don't you wish!
Dream on 😍
Five rooms of everything you can imagine. And then some. The museum was closed when we arrived, but Bill (our harvest host) opened it for us after lunch. This is a true history of a town, leveled in the 6.7 devastating 1983 earthquake and trying to hang on in the 21st Century.
R C Baker got lucky. In 1899 he was diagnosed with asthma. He took a contract to drill a wildcat well in Coalinga. The drier climate improved his health so much he decided to stay. He struck oil and the boom was on. Baker never advanced beyond the third grade, but he possessed an incredible understanding of mechanical and hydraulic systems, and some of his early inventions revolutionized the oil drilling industry. He became a major player in the city. This is from the museum brochure. Bill and Jimmy above, at the entrance to what I'd call the oil room, below.
One wall of a room FILLED with oil "thingees."
Room scenes representing Coalinga, and all of it (so I understood) was donated by/from residents. We've never seen a small town with such a personal history museum. It was great to tour.
Side saddles for women. Honest. Incredible.
Before computers. 😵
Really, who knew there was more than one kind of barbed wire fencing? I mean, who knew? They're not all alike? Why would you need more than one kind? This is crazy.
This is a very cool car. It even has air conditioning via the swamp cooler (photo below) attached to the passenger window. I'd drive this car. Wouldn't you?
This old Model T vehicle was a traveling grocery store that serviced the oil industry camps. Baptiste Motte, who emigrated from Les Barraques, France, began the business in 1919. I saw a picture in the museum of a hillside outside of town that was peppered with oil derricks, so his traveling store must have been a godsend to the out-of-towners.
The things you see! A teacher who "wanted his students to think about in who's shoes they may walk in the future." He wrote to numerous celebrities asking them to send him a pair of their shoes to be displayed at school. And believe it or not, the display includes shoes from Nixon, Golda Meir, Art Buchwald, Irving Stone, Ann Landers, and more. All tagged blue, above. Mind blowing!
Just filled with goodies to look at.
The large building at right houses most of the museum's goodies, but all the structures above are part of the museum. Tergel (forgot to get a pic) is parked behind the wonderful gas station out of the photo at left.
I've always associated Coalinga with the overwhelming fragrance of a cow feed lot, because the Coalinga exit sign on the I-5 freeway is beside a very smelly lot containing hundreds and hundreds of black moo cows, but not girl cows. As many times as we've traversed I-5, up and down the Central Valley, we've never turned off to see what's out there beyond the freeway -- a town, a museum, a park, things you wouldn't see unless you exited the fast track. The town was clean and proud of its heritage. It didn't smell. Heck it's like 16 miles west of I-5!
We didn't get any great pics of the rest of the drive home. Mostly all you see is trees. Trees in perfect rows, guided by GPS. All trimmed the same height, none tall, many squared into an unnatural box shape. The rows go beyond measuring in acres. More like miles. Some are mature trees, others are what I call "stick" trees, which are new saplings, each encased by a white cone, as above. Almond trees. Pistachio trees. Walnut trees. One section devoted to citrus. Trees ... all thirsty. Bad planning to plant thirsty guys in a drought-ridden state.
BTW: I-5 runs from San Diego in the south to the Canadian border in the north. The section through California's Central Valley was the last (faster, more north-south than Hwy 99) section of I-5 to be constructed, with the final segment opened to traffic near Stockton on 10/12/1979. When you could finally zip from LA to Sacramento on newly opened I-5, you'd better have lunch and water with you and be able to "hold your water," because this new freeway bypassed those already established farming communities on Hwy 99, like Fresno, Modesto, etc., with their restaurants, rest rooms, and gas pumps. Even now, long stretches are devoid of "civilization." But you will see trees.
So be it. Happy to see home on a warm/ish Tuesday afternoon. Like I always say, "It's good to go, and it's good to come home." Time to start planning the next trip!
