"Uncle"

Today, Farmer MacGregor begged, "Uncle" and suggested a day off.  I took the wheel and we headed up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.  The climb starts out fairly gentle through the Kern River Oilfield.  No photo of that stretch of the drive.  It's brown and bumpy with horsehead pumps working to bring you petroleum (Yes, I consider petroleum "natural".) products for your convenience.  Once the elevation starts to climb, the grass gets greener and oak trees dot the landscape.  There were a few skiffs of wildflowers in the pastures.

The scenery was out of a "Come to California" brochure.  The intensity of the colors where not captured in these photographs...probably because I had polarized sunglasses on that made everything more intense.

Only a few California poppies were showing along with Fiddlenecks.  One wildflower I did notice a lot of were thistles.   They dotted the roadside along a cattle trail.  I feel like having artichokes!

After our good lunch and tour of the countryside, we headed back down to the San Joaquin Valley.  Farmer MacGregor couldn't sit still too long and headed out to the garden to do a little pruning on his Red Flame Grapevine.

Hope everyone enjoys a great Easter weekend.