Carrot Festival Parade

I was told that it is not always clear where we are at any time so I am going to start to post our location on each blog.  Let me know what you think.

Where are we tonight?  Viejas Casino just east of Alpine CA

Moving day today.  Time to head farther west on our trip to San Diego.  Before we headed out we went in the Holtville to the Carrot Festival Parade.  This is a big event in town and there were probably a couple thousand people on the streets for the parade.  I took some pictures to share with you.

We snickered at this one because they had everything BUT carrots displayed.

But this one is ALL carrots

What is a southern parade without some horses.  These ladies were fooling us with the pretty dresses.  They were all cowgirl underneath.

There were some Mexicans who had trained horses that would dance.  This was worth seeing.

And right behind them was the good old pooper scooper guys.. Good job on the cleanup.

Love the classic cars

And an old El Cameno..  Brings back a bunch of memories from my younger wilder years.

And does anyone remember the fishbowl???  We used to dare each other to buy one.  No one ever did.  Can you remember the make and model of this one??  I'll be looking in the comments.

And my uncle had a Ford Falcon like this with 3 on the tree.  It was IMPOSSIBLE to start out without revving the engine to the boards and riding the clutch to get it to move and even then sometimes it would leap ahead and then stall.

And our good friends Myles and Lori raised their family in one of these.  Their kids even learned to drive in one of these VW vans.  And how fitting to see it in California with a surf board on top.  I can hear all the Beach  Boys songs now.

And we met a nice couple in town last night who spent a lot of time telling us about the community and the agriculture in the area.  They have this nice little truck and we were happy to see them again.

And what is any parade without a marching band or two.  Back in Canada we very seldom have marching bands so this is a treat for us.  One day I will learn how to post a video so you can hear them play and see them marching.

After the parade we loaded up and moved em out heading west.

Pat took some interesting pictures of the Ponderosa heading down the road so I will post a few.  As you know we installed solar in Quartzsite but our 4 panels was dwarfed by the array of panels we saw on the side of the road.  They went on for a long way.  There were thousands of them.

We have solar on the roof but wind power may be a future option

Down some 6% grades

And huff and puff up the other side.

And if you started to overheat there was one of these stop and fill up points about every half mile.  I bet they get used lots when it 120 degrees out in the summer.

We saw a lot of interesting rock formations along the way.  I often wonder what it was like when these mountains were made.  I bet God had a lot of fun doing these landscapes.

We finally reached the Viejas Casino just east of Alpine CA.  There was a great big parking lot to stop for the night.  We did go into the casino but never won anything so there are no pictures in the casino.

P&H parked right beside us

It was neat watching the cloud fold around the mountain just out our window.

Just up the road from us was an emergency helicopter pad and it brought back memories of watching the search for a young base jumper who fell off Superstition Mountain about this time last year.  These machines are what can make the difference in these mountains, although the Superstition Mountain search did not turn out so well.

And just for Kyra, here is the view out our window tonight. (can't help that they parked so close lol)