Carrizo Plains

We re-visited the Carizzo Plains, this time when the flowers were in bloom.

A few years ago during our visit an irritated aging hippie homesteader complained for some time about the ugly, environment killing solar panel arrays that were planned for installation in what he felt was his personal beautiful valley. Now the panels were installed. There were a surprising large number of arrays installed by a large number of companies in a few short years. The environment seems unharmed and we thought the arrays were attractive … well, more attractive than a coal fired power plant.

The drought kept the number of flowers to a minimum yet made for a cheerful ride. If it ever rains again in some future winter, take a pleasant weekend road trip in March to visit the Plains and central California in general. It's a refreshing trip.

As we approach from Central Valley, we first see these soft hills in front of the Temblor Range. 

As we crossed the Temblor Range, we stopped for a bit before dropping into the Carrizo Plains.

We crossed the San Andreas Fault Zone.

Here are a of the flowers that carpet the Plain.
Note the solar panels slicing thru the center of the photo.
No, really. Look closely. That thin black line is a solar panel array.

Here is a close up of a typical soalr array. It's not really this blue but they do look like lakes from a distance.

An overview of the Plain. You can see 4 solar arrays and one salt lake. Can you tell which is which?

For reference, here is a typical coal fired power plant as we found in Arizona
I had to steal this photo from Wikipedia as Cyndi wouldn't let me stop to take a picture while we passed by. She thought we'd be shot as terrorists.
Cholla Power Plant, from Wikipeida by PDTillman, Creative Commons.

A selfie with a 5' tumbleweed.

As we left for Atascadero, we drove through more lovely scenery in the Caliente Range.

And we ended up near Paso Robles, where we spent the night.