Escondido, California

Good afternoon, my friends. I'm happy to say we've survived the journey south. We have arrived at our Escondido home for the next two weeks. Already I've been messaging with my friend Debi and setting up a date for a quilt shop visit. She knows of one I haven't visited in this area. Sounds like fun, huh?

It was dark when we left Bakersfield this morning, although it was well after sunrise. A few times the sun tried to peek through.

We were well south before we drove into the sunshine. It was both cloudy and sunny for our drive down, but no rain, thankfully. We are more than ready to be finished with rain.

We drove past this body of water along our way. You can see this is a reservoir created by a dam on the left side of the image.

Here's another shot. This is Pyramid Lake. It is formed by Pyramid Dam on Piru Creek in the eastern San Emigdio Mountains, near Castaic, Southern California. It is a part of the West Branch California Aqueduct, which is a part of the California State Water Project. Its water is fed by the system after being pumped up from the San Joaquin Valley and through the Tehachapi Mountains.

Also we passed by Magic Mountain. Before you get any ideas about stopping here, you should know I took my last roller coaster ride (and I do mean "last") about 45 years ago. You can go if you want to. We'll wait. Maybe.

This is what we saw for most of the day. We were driving through the San Gabriel Mountains.

And we drove through my birthplace in Corona, California. 

The landscape in southern California is distinctive for the granite boulders in the image below. For this, I'll turn the blog over to someone I met while consulting The Google. This gentleman, Bill Walker, tells me he's been "studying the earth sciences my entire life." And according to Mr. Walker,  "You’re seeing exposed granitic rock that’s undergone arid-climate weathering. 

"The granite is there because 100–120 million years ago, a tectonic plate under the Pacific Ocean was being forced (subducted) under the North American continent. As the ocean floor was forced down to depths of hundreds of miles, it melted. This molten rock rose upwards towards the surface through layers of rock. Some of it may have erupted through volcanoes, but most of it slowly cooled miles underground in huge masses called plutons, gradually turning into granitic rocks.

"Tens of millions of years later the region was uplifted many thousands of feet. This allowed erosion to gradually remove the miles of rock overhead, eventually leaving the granitic rock exposed to the elements. The various types of granitic rock, such as granite, granodiorite, etc. tend to be massive in structure. That means that cracks (“joints”) are far apart and the rock tends to split into boulders rather than small fragments. Arid-climate weathering then tends to make the boulders rounded.

"That’s how we got today’s landscape in this corner of California." Thank you, Mr. Walker.

As we drove farther and farther south, we started seeing poppies painting the hillsides.

My friend Debi tells me these aren't poppies, but instead, are daisies. They were on both sides of the road. Debi probably knows better than I, but they look like poppies to me.

We were nearing Escondido when we passed under this bridge. It was completed a few years before Mike and I were married. The design was unique and sleek at the time it was built.

Approaching Fallbrook, we started seeing avocado groves covering the hilltops. We'll be making a drive here to our favorite produce stand soon to pick up a bag of avocados and whatever else they might be selling.

Upon our arrival, I snapped this image of the Bird of Paradise growing at our site. This was my post for today's #amonthinfloral on Instagram.

Okay, so I'm not sure what the next few days hold. I need to do some laundry, and we're going to have to get some groceries. We have two dinner dates set up with friends, and I'm bringing an apple crisp to one of them. (That reminds me to check in on the other dinner to see what I can contribute.) No doubt we'll be visiting some quilt shops. Also, we'll visit the Oceanside Pier, which is one of our favorite spots in the area. There is much we can do here, but we're mainly here to enjoy meeting up with dear friends and to enjoy the weather. It's been a while since we've been able to discard our winter woolies.

Everyone is resting up right at the moment after another long day of driving. Seems like a good idea to join them for a bit.