Leaving' Vegas as the sun comes up

Nancy and I were awake at 5:00.  We got up, had coffee in the dark so as not to disturb Nicole, and were on the road at 6:00.  As we left the park, Nancy noticed that the Walmart across the street didn't seem very busy, so we stopped and picked up a few things.  Even with the delay, we still managed to get across town to I-15 by 7:00 and were south bound and down, loaded up and trucking, just as the sun rose over the eastern mountains.

One of the reasons we were keen on getting an early start was that we had been told to expect a long delay getting through the California agricultural inspection check point.  We thought that the inspection station would be at the state line which is only 35 miles from The Strip and reasoned that they wouldn't be very busy first thing in the morning.

Although the check point actually was at Yermo, 100 miles inside California, and we didn't reach it until 10:00, there was still no lines, no waiting, hardly any delay at all.

Eighty miles further on, just beyond the town of Mojave where the highway climbs into the Tehachapi Mountains we came upon an extraordinary sight, the Tehachapi Wind Farm, the second largest collection of wind turbines in the world.  Every ridge for miles is covered with them, approximately 5,000 in all.  While I'm a fan of clean energy, all I could think of was how much noise they must be generating.

Because we got such an early start and had no holdup at the inspection station, we reached Bakersfield, our intended destination for tonight, by noon.  We stopped at Costco for gas and some lunch and pushed on.

We got nearly to Fresno before calling it a day.  The most interesting thing about tonight's campground is the size of the trees.

Day 69
Las Vegas, NV to Kingsburg, CA

Daily Mileage:  378.8
Total Mileage:  11,354.2