Winter is almost over

Today is February 17, and we're feeling like "winter" is nearly over. I put " around winter because we have a hard time realizing that we really are in the winter months. The California low desert is perhaps the finest climate zone we have ever lived in, at least the winter part of it.

Last week we took a tour of a new, almost completed, solar energy farm near Niland. The farm has been under construction for about a year. Some of the workers, and the supervisor, live in our RV park and they provided some of our senior citizen residents with the tour. Within sight of where we are for the season we can see geothermal power plants, natural gas power plants, and solar power systems. To the north of us is the largest assemblage of wind turbines we have ever seen. Lot of alternative energy here.

This was the first time we've ever been so up close and personal with a solar energy farm. Very impressive, and if it performs like the owners are hoping it will be a showcase of how to make electricity where the sun shines. And it does shine here! We've been getting some return from our garden since January, but the tomatoes are now turning red.

Here is part of our group waiting to be escorted through the solar panel array. This farm is about 140 acres and contains about 100,000 panel assemblies.

A view of some of the solar panels, all of which, they apologized, were made in China

Guard shack at the gate to Five Star Electric.

Pat with some of our garden produce on Feb 17.

Our garden is not covered in any way (it almost never freezes here), but we do have drip irrigation installed throughout. 80+ is typical daytime temp for Jan/Feb.

This is Presidents' Day weekend, one of the busiest for our campground. I think we are pretty much filled to capacity for the next three days. Pat is working in the office and restaurant. I have the day off, but am on-call. So far, just enjoying the day and getting some personal chores done.  Stay tuned. More next week.