It's been awhile

It's been awhile. I started a Disneyland/Knott's Berry Farm post, but didn't finish it. Why? Bad WiFi, time constraints, visiting family, and more driving. We are currently in Medford, OR with fantastic WiFi. But I forgot to do this until late today...........

Ok, uploaded pictures and they are out of order. It's time to go to our friend's house for dinner, hopefully I'll remember to finish this post tonight. Cool thing being retired, I can stay up as late as I want and take a nap the next day. I.can.stay.up.as.late.as.I.want.

I'm going to save time and just comment on the pics as they came up. I think they are all just backwards. lol.

Let's start with Jessie's Grove. This is one of the "Harvest Hosts." We pay a yearly fee to HH and then get to stay at locations around the country, and Canada, for free. This one is a winery. We stayed here two nights. There were no hookups, so it was dry camping for us. We parked in a big grassy field, lots of room for the dogs to run around in, even though Artie wanted to just go to where the people were.

To remind you we are still in California, here is a palm tree and an orange tree.

This part of California, Lodi area, has these large oak trees with small oak leaves. The acorn nuts are longer than the acorns I know of on the east coast. They are more hot dog shaped. Plus there were these round things growing on the trees. I googled them. They are called oak galls.
Galls are generally formed when an insect, or its larvae, introduce chemicals into a specific location, to push the plant’s growth hormones into overdrive. This can result in a great profusion of normal cells, increased size of existing cells, or the alteration of entire plant structures into new, alien forms.

Find more information at https://www.kqed.org/science/23927/what-gall-the-crazy-cribs-of-parasitic-wasps

These the insides of these galls can provide you with ink. Not knowing what they were at the time of the pictures, I didn't open one up. Now I want to. I was told there were 130 year old vines on the property. I think this is their field. I asked about the bird houses. They are for owls to keep away the critters.

The fence is me playing with my camera.

I took a picture of me in the puddle to tell you I bought these boots for $15.00 at Walmart. Glad I did! Many more days of rain predicted for Oregon! The picture of leaves below shows buds for the flowers to make grapes.

I had to get in news of Artie and Leinen, since this is their page. It was wet at the vineyard, and had cut grass that collected on the dogs. When they came in I put numerous blankets and a towel down for them on the couch. Then I found them like this. The bear was a carving at an RV park in Bakersfield, CA. It was Bear Mountain RV Park. I thought this was cute-it was by the very nice fenced in park for dogs.

Driving through LA I one area looked familiar. I thought, "This looks like the area I find the blimp." Yep, not too far away, there it was. Then a pic of the highway...........

Had several trips to JW airport. I flew in, Mom flew in, Mom flew out........

Cousins! and Auntie Yosh with her sister, Ayako, my mother-in-law. Ages 99 and 92

Here are all the relatives that showed up for the "mini" reunion. Some of us had never met, some hadn't seen each other for 30 years.

The poppy super bloom. Picture doesn't do it justice.

I just took this picture because I thought it funny. When you first see this giant balloon on the highway you see it at an angle coming around the corner. So the first word I see is Pet, not carpet. I thought a blue gorilla funny for a pet store.