A Little Road Trip

When we went up to Tehachapi in September for Octoberfest (yeah, I know, Octoberfest is supposed to be in OCTOBER, hello!) and sweated in the hot sun, we picked up a flyer for an Octoberfest that was actually happening in October up in the mountain community of Stallion Springs last Saturday. We decided to drive up in the hopes that their beer lines wouldn't be as long as the ridiculously long ones in Tehachapi and we had never been to Stallion Springs, so it would be an adventure as well.

Before we left I asked Keith if he wanted me to get directions off of the computer but he said, no, he thinks he knows where it is and there is an offramp and sign on the freeway for Stallion Springs.

Which there isn't.

We had to stop at a gas station in Tehachapi for directions.

But, the drive was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera.

I had no idea that if you turned right while driving through Tehachapi the road would take you through a mountain pass to another valley, a beautiful valley surrounded by tree covered mountains with fields of whatever they grow up there. A rural valley with ranches and farmland and at one end of the valley nestled up against the mountains is the little unincorporated community of Stallion Springs. After you pass the prison.

I've never seen such a well kept little town, most mountain towns have the usual junky yards and old houses, but this town is clean, the houses are new, and the community center where the Octoberfest was being held was quite impressive. The Octoberfest not so much, but they did have bratwurst for Keith and the beer was cheap and the lines were short. A craft show was going on inside the community center with the usual small town crafts, and a bake sale was going on right outside. I couldn't find the advertised pretzels, though, and I just can't eat bratwurst and I was starving since I hadn't eaten lunch in anticipation of a pretzel. I finally found them at the bake sale, but it was the driest hardest pretzel I'd ever eaten, despite it being advertised as baked fresh that morning.

So, half of a dry pretzel eaten and still hungry, we decided to take a little drive down the main road of Stallion Springs and then head back to Tehachapi for some early dinner. Apparently Stallion Springs is a resort type town, with a golf course that meanders through town, and a big resort hotel by the golf course, and an actual covered bridge crossing a pond/creek thing. It really was a pretty town, but we wondered what the people who live there do so that they can afford to live there. Perhaps they all work at the prison or own the farmlands in the valley. It's actually considered part of Tehachapi even though it's a good 15 miles or so outside of Tehachapi proper. And, I'm guessing that they all have to drive into Tehachapi to buy their groceries. Which could be a problem in the winter since it snows there and if it's not snowing it's raining, and all of the roads we drove on to get there had warning signs about being prone to flooding.

Anyway, back to Tehachapi where we went to The Village Grill instead of The Apple Shed because I'm kind of tired of The Apple Shed, but The Village Grill's food was pretty awful, so we should have just gone to The Apple Shed.

That is probably the last road trip we will take for a while, but it was nice to see a part of Kern County that we hadn't seen before, and if I were rich I might even consider living in Stallion Springs, it was that nice.