Road Trip Part One- Up The Mountains to Tehachapi

When we first moved here to Bakersfield we took quite a few little day trips and drives to see what kind of land we lived in, but it's been a long time since we took a day off and did a little traveling. What with economic crashes and high gas prices, not to mention cars that were old and rather unreliable, we just haven't gone much of anywhere in a very long time.

Saturday we decided to buy the gas and bring some lunch money along and go out and see the spring flowers and green mountains. The weather was perfect, the air was clear, and it turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend the day.

We made a big loop, driving out Hwy 58 and up the mountains, through Tehachapi, back down the mountains on the other side, through the Mojave desert, back up the mountains and through all the little towns to Lake Isabella, and down Hwy 178, following the Kern River through the very narrow canyon, and back into Bakersfield.

I took lots of boring pictures, so I'm going to break the trip up into two posts. Part one is the beautiful road through the rolling hills near Caliente. There is a freeway that you can take to Tehachapi which is also a really pretty drive, but this road is so much more fun.




Lots and lots of wildflowers in the green hills.





And a few cows here and there.

More green hills.

And flowers.


And then it was time for lunch. We were going to eat up in Tehachapi at the Apple Shed but I was really really hungry and wanted to stop at the Keene Cafe to grab a bag of chips or something to tide us over until we got some real food. The last time we had stopped at the Cafe it wasn't exactly a cafe, just a deli with already made sandwiches like you could get at any gas station, so we were pleasantly surprised when we walked in and it was a real restaurant again. So we decided to do what the sign says and EAT.



It was a really good lunch, we both had burgers with homemade potato salad. We were tempted by the pie flavors offered that day with the chocolate peanut butter pie sounding especially delicious (anything chocolate always sounds delicious to me) but we were so full we thought we'd better skip the pie. They also have mexican food on the menu, so they bring you chips and salsa when you sit down, always an added bonus.

Tomorrow: deserts and more mountains.