Down a Bumpy Road to Lake Success

After picking up a few more things in Walmart, making our campsite even more expensive, we set off down route 99 to Fresno. Now Interstate 5 all the way from Olympia down to Stockton south of Sacramento is a really smooth road. It must be, overall, one of the smoothest of the Interstates, and we've traveled over some pretty rought Interstates. So it was a pleasant drive all the way down to the Sacramento/Stockton area. But once we got off onto 99, there were a few sections where you thought the tires were going to blow out, or the springs were going to break. And you couldn't just take it slowly, because there were two lanes of truck traffic just going to beat the band. You either go slow and cause a real bottleneck of trucks trying to get past you, or you go along with the flow - bumpety bump bump!

We were going through Fresno on this route, so I convinced Doreen that we should make a stop at an attraction called Forrestiere Underground Gardens. This is some system of underground rooms, gardens, patios, house, chapel, etc. lit by skylights that a Sicilian immigrant built by hand over a 40 year period back in the early 1900s. Sounded like a neat place to go, but when we got there, there was a sign saying "Closed due to excess water." I guess all the recent rain had flooded the place! I tried to convince Doreen that we should go to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art, History, and Science, but she would have none of that. So on we went down route 99.

Click on all photos to enlarge

We then headed a little east to the Tule Recreation Area on Lake Success, a lake formed by a dam built by the Army Corps of Engineers. These camping areas are always good ones, and we get in at half price because of Doreen's seniors pass. We didn't realize until we got there that we had been there before, back on Dec 1st, 2011. After a walk around the place, we sat out in the afternoon and evening, and enjoyed the warm sunny day. As you can see from the picture, there were lots of campsites available, and we didn't get turned away because of the crowding!

The water level was pretty low in the lake, but this may not be because of the recent drought. I learned the last time we were here, that these arificial lakes along the foothills of the Sierras supply water for all the irrigation for farming in the large San Joaquin Valley. So in the summertime, the irrigation pretty much dries the lakes up, and they fill back up in the winter and spring. You can see the low water level with the dam in the background in the picture. And you can also see how it was a sunny, but really hazy day, with the sun shining through thin clouds all day.