Springville California - Road Trip!

I knew this past weekend was going to be beautiful, after the previous weekend being at 100 degrees, we were promised much more spring like weather, with the highs in the 80's and a nice breeze blowing. I was feeling a little house bound since we really haven't done much of anything so far this year, other than a quick trip down south at Easter time. I thought Keith might not want to go anywhere after his trip up to Fresno on Thursday, but he thought going for a drive sounded good, too, so Saturday morning we set out to go up Hwy 65 and find someplace in one of the little towns for lunch. We were thinking Lindsay, since we had visited that town for a few minutes on our last little trip up that way, and what a cute little town it was. But, when we hit Porterville, we saw a sign for Springville and since we'd never been there, took a right through Porterville and on up the road.

The trip on Hwy 65 is really pretty once you get out of the oilfields outside of Bakersfield, very rural and lots of rolling hills and orange groves. Lots and lots of orange groves. There are a couple of small agricultural type towns right on 65 before you hit Porterville, and more towns between 65 and the 99. The scenery is mostly green, with the flat valley full of orchards and fields on the left as you are driving up the highway, and the brown this time of year hills and beginnings of the Sierra Nevadas on the right. Very pretty and very nice to see after months of being in a suburban/urban environment.

The road to Springville was even prettier, going towards the mountains and climbing up through the hills, past Lake Success, which looked really nice and we think we will come back and bring a picnic lunch next time. Pine trees are now on the hills, and beautiful ranch houses beside the road, and then around a bend we come to Springville, which is basically in a river canyon. The altitude is 1000 feet, so not so high that they would get snow, but high enough where the mountains around the town would definitely be snow covered in the winter and what a view they must have all year round. At a population of a little less than 1000 people, small town indeed, with a few businesses along the main street, a hamburger stand and a funky (very funky) little cafe that we stopped at for lunch and to go to the bathroom because by now I REALLY NEEDED TO GO!

Lunch was okay, you don't expect fine cuisine in a tiny little cafe where the floor and your table kind of slope towards the wall and there are five stools at the counter, six booths, one waitress, and one cook.

We drove through the houses alongside the river, you couldn't actually see the river because of the houses and trees, but I was impressed to see that all of the little houses were very well kept and the town was very clean, until we got to the end of the road of houses and there they were, the hillbilly houses that every town has, with junk in the yard and kids bikes laying around and Christmas lights still up, you know those houses. Where the nearest neighbor, whose house and yard are immaculate, has a For Sale sign out front because he is probably really tired of living next to Just Throw The Junk In The Yard Mr. and Mrs. Billy Bob.

Anyway, beautiful little town and next time we'll keep going further up the road to see where it goes.

We didn't take any pictures but I did find one on the internet that shows the cafe where we ate.  The sign that says CAFE.

I also found a map that shows where we were.

As we were driving up to Springville, we passed an orange stand on the other side of the road, so on the way back down stopped so Keith could get some oranges. Here is something you would never see in the city, an honor system orange stand, where you grab your huge bag of oranges that were grown right there and put your $5.00 in a metal box on the wall.