Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon North Rim and the Verde Valley
So here we are in September and we are now on our last leg of our 2018 journey around the country.
Heading east from the Carmel area of California, we stopped in Bakersfield for a couple days. This area is a major hub for agriculture and oil production. Kern County is the most productive oil-producing county and the fourth most productive agricultural county in the United States.
And it’s HOT!!! So i looked up the average temps here…
Summers are very hot and there are extended stretches of hot weather with 108 days per year above 90 °! In addition, 33 days are above 100 ° and a handful of days each summer can be expected to top 110 °.
Hitting the highway again, we pass through Barstow and then the Mojave Desert on the way to Las Vegas. We passed the town of Zzyzx, (formerly Soda Springs). LOL, we didn’t stop.
Right at the Nevada border, in Ivanpah Dry Lake, California, we came down out of some mountains into a huge valley and saw this!
This is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) – a solar tower technology to produce clean, reliable solar electricity to more than 140,000 homes. When it’s completed it will be the largest solar thermal power tower system in the world. This solar farm is built on 3,500 acres of public desert land. When you see it, the size and magnitude of it is breathtaking! There are three towers and thousands of arrays of solar panels – it’s just an amazing sight.
