Taft, California

Good morning, my friends. It was a dark and rainy day yesterday. It rained the whole day. Fortunately, it was just a kind of normal rain, and so it didn't make driving hazardous. It made it difficult to take pictures though. I wish I had better pictures to show you today, but we'll muddle through, okay? Before we took off in the morning, I made some more progress on my Christmas Miracle piece.

Sadie helped me move my hoop down and to the left. I’ll pick it up there this morning.

We headed south for another day of driving. We’re still in a mostly agricultural part of California. I saw just one barn yesterday. (There might have been more, but I only saw one.)

Mainly, we passed through rolling green hills yesterday, and not much else.

Surprisingly, I believe this is a field of pineapple. The conditions in California are appropriate for pineapple, but I’ve never seen it grown here before.

Also, we passed by this orange grove. I’m sorry about the water spots on my pictures for this post, but it was unavoidable. These trees actually had oranges on them.

When we pulled into the Buena Vista Aquatic Recreational Area campground, I could look across the field and see the lake from our space. It was still raining, and so we weren’t really able to enjoy this much.

Sorry for the poor quality of this image, but I wanted you to see the bazillions of coots that were lining the shore.

Here’s a better picture of a coot I found in the public domain. I love their feet.

(Image credit: "American coots- Matt Lee" by APR Archive is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Our primary reason for being here was to get a look at Mike’s birthplace in Taft. You can read about the history of Taft right here. It’s pretty interesting. Taft is situated in a major petroleum and natural gas production region in California. It is one of the few remaining towns in the United States that exist exclusively because of nearby oil reserves. The 2020 census put the population at around 8,600 people.

We got set up, had some lunch, took naps, and then we drove about 20 miles north to find Taft. Along the way it was clear that this area exists for oil and natural gas. There were holding tanks like these everywhere. Also, the smell of sulfur was in the air.

If you’re a fan of the television series, Landman, then you’ve probably seen rigs like the one below on that show.

Something else seen in abundance here are these operating oil wells.

We passed by the welcome sign.

And then saw another one closer in with some of the things you might see here, and the organizations that exist.

We’d already decided to go to the West Kern Oil Museum. It’s only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and in any case, it was closed for the holidays. It looked like fun. We might try a return visit timed to be able to see it. You can see some images and read more about it at that link I’ve given you.

Even the outdoor exhibits were fenced off, but I was able to get a few pictures from our side of the fence.

This is a big giant axle for some big piece of machinery.

Not sure what these are, but they look like something you’d see on Landman.

And then there was this…Santa for Stephen King fans, I guess.

As we drove away from the museum, we saw this sign. Since we were just exploring with no particular destination in mind, this seemed like a good choice.

Driving through town, I spotted this sign company with murals painted on the walls.

This is the “business district” and the older part of Taft.

Mike’s grandfather, Harry Riddle, owned a jewelry store in Taft. We wondered…was this it? Of course, it would have had his name if it were his store, but nothing says someone else didn’t take over the space. That would have been 70+ years ago.

We also spotted this water tower, visible all over town.

Here’s a little blurb from Wikipedia that talks about the Sunset Railroad:

The town began as Siding Number Two on the Sunset Railroad. According to a display at the West Kern Oil Museum, local residents asked the Southern Pacific Railroad if the station could be named Moro when the rails arrived in about 1900, but a railroad official declined because the name would be too easily confused with the coastal town of Morrow Bay. Instead, the railroad directed the station be called Moron, a word which as yet had no association with lack of intelligence (cf. Spanish word for hillock, moron). Pictures of local businesses, including the Moron Pharmacy, hang in the museum. After a fire burned much of the town, the name was changed to Taft in honor of William Howard Taft.

Okay, and then we found ourselves at the Old Historic Fort. As it turns out, this was completed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1940. It is built from adobe bricks and is a replica of Fort Sutter near Sacramento. It was, essentially, a federal building, housing federal offices. 

And of course it was closed as well. We could peer in through this gate.

Looking to the left, it looked like this…they look like barracks to me, but apparently they were offices. 

Looking to the right, it looked like this:

So that was all we saw of Taft. Driving back, we crossed over the California Aqueduct. Over 400 miles in length, the aqueduct begins at the Clifton Court Forebay at the southwestern corner of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The aqueduct then heads south, eventually splitting into three branches: the Coastal Branch, ending at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County (our camping spot for tonight); the West Branch, conveying water to Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County; and the East Branch, connecting Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County.

 

I regret the image below isn’t in better focus. It was getting very dark by then. I wanted you to see the spherical tanks there. Those are for natural gas. 

We noticed pink clouds and a patch of blue in the setting sunlight. 

Maybe we’ll have a better day of weather today. Indeed, we heard folks out last night ringing in the new year. Hearing that, we assumed it had stopped raining. When we awakened this morning, we could hear it coming down. Nevertheless, the forecast is for some weather good enough for us to get out and stroll around for our first visit to Solvang, California. And if you’ve never heard of Solvang, well, you know I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. 

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you can thank Smitty’s tail.  It has been caressing my cheek and urging me on as I type.  

Happy New Year, everybody. When I was a young girl, I longed to establish a pen pal relationship with someone...anyone. It never worked out. My motivation for writing letters always outlasted that of my wished-for pen pal. And now I have all of you as my daily pen pals. Thank you for reading. And thank you for following along these past many years.