Green, greener, greenest

Good evening, Campers! It’s Silver Cliche’ here. Tonight’s report is being delivered from Lodi, California in the north end of the San Joaquin Valley, just south of Sacramento.

First, I need to describe the place we are staying and how we came to be here. We are parked on J&M Farm. Our hosts Joe and Alina signed up with Harvest Hosts to allow people with self contained RVs to stay overnight on their land. We signed up separately to be able to find folks like them and connect through the Harvest Host App. We needed a place to set down in this area. I reached out. Joe responded positively. Here we are. It’s that easy.

This region grows a huge volume and vast array of crops (more on that later in the post). Here in Lodi we’ve seen two crops in abundance... wine grapes and cherries. A little research tonight told me that the area around Lodi produces more wine than Napa and Sonoma Counties combined. If I can show my snarky side and my newfound Lodi pride in one sentence I’d say “Napa is where they put wine in brochures, Lodi is where they put it in bottles.” In keeping with what we’ve seen, we are parked tonight on a dirt and gravel, road about 3/4 of a mile from the nearest pavement with a field of cherry vines (not full on trees... vines) loaded with fruit on one side and a field of grape vines on the other. That would be special enough, but there are fields of grapes, cherries and God only knows what else in every direction for as far as the eye can seen.

So, thanks Joe and Alina, and thanks to Harvest Hosts. This approach will clearly play a role in our trip planning going forward. Let me show you a few shots of their farm:

So, back to the day’s doings. We woke to a quiet campground at San Luis Reservoir. When you travel week after week, as we do on a trip like this, you feel the rhythm of campground life. A few campgrounds are busy every day... think big name national parks. Most are busy Friday and Saturday and not so much other days. When I plan a trip like this I literally highlight the national parks and weekend days, figure out where we need to be, make those reservations first then go back and fill in the weekdays. At a place like San Luis Reservoir, Monday morning is quiet. We took it slow, and left at about 11:00.

We headed north using I-5 to move along the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley. We stopped an a farm stand in Gustin, California. Well, not a “farm stand” exactly... more of a purveyor of California agricultural products. No, that’s not quite right either. Maybe “locally grown medicinals” describes it better. Ok... a dispensary. It’s legal and recreational here now. You have to be over 21 to become medicated. Fortunately they haven’t set a maximum age. When 65 year old Californians start driving like 85 year old Floridians (slow and in the left lane) expect to see age limits at dispensaries. Until then...

We traveled county roads to get to and from the dispensary and got our first “up close and personal” view of California agriculture for the day. The trees lining “Orchard Road” were healthy and ranged from tall, mature, productive to fields of saplings over a five mile stretch. The signs of irrigation were everywhere. Major pumps, canals, cisterns, plastic pipe and drip lines. Some of the trees had fuzzy olive green fruits about the size of a golf ball but shaped like a football. Here’s a picture Mrs. C’ took of one.

A little research showed that these were almonds. For the next 30 minutes or so we saw mile after mile of almond groves. Most were healthy and productive. Some were dead on the stump. Whole groves. Dried wood standing in the shape of once living trees. It told the tale of water allocation and a statewide drought. With declining water availability and rising demands from human consumption to agriculture to sustaining environmental resources there have been some losers. Dead almond trees by the acre have been among the losers.

By early afternoon we reached Stockton, an urban center with about 300,000 population in the San Joaquin Valley. That makes them big enough to have a Trader Joe’s but not big enough for a Whole Foods, evidently. Fair enough! Trader Joe’s will do. We stocked up with some stuff we’ll need in the next week or so, grabbed some lunch and chilled a bit before heading to Lodi. I was surprised to see large, ocean going ships from I-5 in Stockton. The city is 70 miles inland and there are mountains along the California coast. Fortunately for Stockton there is a gap in those mountains at San Francisco Bay. That enables large ships to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge and continue 70 miles inland to Stockton. 

So, that’s our day. An exposure to agriculture, a stop in a city and night in a vineyard.can we top that tomorrow? We’ll try! I hope you’ll roll along with us.

Later...