- GregL's Blog - Tehachapi News

Hike in the Sequoia's

My wife and I went on a special hike with Valerie Cassity of the Sequoia ForestKeeper organization the other day. We were lucky enough to win this private hike at their event at Mama Hillybeans.

The Sequoia's are so incredibly majestic that my words simply cannot describe them, which is why I take pictures I guess. To walk through a forest and realize that some of the trees you are looking at are thousands of years old is very special! I don't recall seeing a large Sequoia that wasn't fire scarred. They have lived through many generations of people, and even civilizations! Almost anywhere you look, you can see every stage of birth, life, and death of those trees spanning thousands of years.

I haven't been to the Sequoia's since I was a kid, and my folks were there before my time in the early 60's. They have some great pics that I'll post in another blog after I get them scanned in. In the mean time, here is a link to the pictures from our recent hike.

Sequoia ForestKeeper hike gallery

Enjoy!

What happened in BVS tonight?

I watched a helicopter land at the fire station in BVS this evening (Monday), then watched an emergency vehicle with lights flashing descend the hill from the Jacaranda or El Rancho vicinity. Then about 20 minutes passed before the helicopter lifted off and headed out towards Bakersfield at about 8:40pm. Someone was in bad shape I'm guessing.

AeroGarden veggies

The AeroGarden is a hydroponic garden for vegetables, herbs and spices, and lettuce that grows right in your kitchen without soil. It's water based (hydroponic) and uses nutrient tablets every few weeks. They are totally awesome! These pictures are from the second planting of each of our gardens. The one on the left is baby arugula lettuce that still needs a week or two before harvest, and the right one is herbs including basil, mint, chives, thyme, parsely. Eveything is so incredibly fresh and vibrant, the basil is out of this world! At meal time, snip off a leaf, tear it up over your salad or main dish and man oh man!

Here is the website for the AeroGarden: http://www.aerogrow.com/

4th of July balloons

I know there's a million pictures of balloons, and they do it every 4th, but I thought I'd post a few anyway. Maybe next year I can remember to get myself down to the airport and take some pictures of the jets!

Downtown's Fireworks

Here's a few pictures of the fireworks downtown, with a few trains thrown in!

This evening in my backyard

These pictures are from my backyard this evening. Nature is so cool isn't it!!! There's stuff to see everywhere you look, like the little white grasshopper who is about 1/4" long!

Hey, it was cool to see some of you guys tonight at the FM, maybe we'll see some of you tomorrow too!

Anybody know what these bugs are?

I saw quite a few of these bugs climbing on the stalks of those little flowers that close during the daytime in BVS yesterday. Some of them were hooked on to another bug (mating I guess). They looked like little freight train engines connected back to back, especially when they traveled up and down the stalks, like a little engine consist!

Anybody know what they are?

Microscopic Parking Spaces

Well, here is yet another disturbing side effect of modern development: microscopic parking lots and spaces. My wife and I went to the new shopping center on Tucker, where Subway and Del Taco are, this weekend. I was driving my F-150 because I had been hauling trash and tree limbs, and I had one heck of a time fitting into the parking spaces there. Not only is the parking lot very confined, but the spaces are so small it's unbelievable. I watched a guy in an Expedition try to maneuver into a spot and he had to back up about four or five times, not because he was a poor driver but because it simply is not physically possible to pull right into a spot there with a large vehicle.

I already know the answer to this question, but I have to ask it anyway, what the heck were the developers thinking???!!! There are lots of farms and horses in Tehachapi and the surrounding area which means there are lots of large trucks! Gives us some room! But of course, I know that a parking space itself does not directly generate revenue. It does, however, do so indirectly. And I for one will be hesitant to go to a place where I can't easily fit my truck, and only have six inches on each side! I love Tehachapi, but this is just another step toward urbanization, with this little town slowly becoming more like big cities. Bummer.

Mission San Luis Obispo

Here are some pictures from a recent trip to Mission San Luis Obispo. We stayed at the Madonna Inn which is always a hoot! And the mission is walking distance, only a mile and a half from the Madonna. The downtown area is very nice too, with lots of shops and restaurants.

Stevenson Fire Pictures

Well, I was minding my own business at work today when the wife calls and says I best get home. Luckily it was a slow day and I was able to make it home just in time to get stuck in a long line of cars - the CHP was only letting residents in. The winds were blowing the fire away from homes, but it got VERY close for a while there!

These were all taken from the second story of my house in Stevenson Ranch.