Day 48, August 28...Manteca, CA to Ridgecrest, CA

I left Manteca this morning and headed south on CA99 to Bakersfield, then east on CA 178 to Ridgecrest, which is south of China Lake Naval Air Station.  It's also about 75 miles south of Death Valley, which I had intended to tour tomorrow before better sense took over.  Right now it's 109 degrees outside and we're about 2500 feet higher than DV...so, on to Plan B for tomorrow.

I stopped at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater, CA on the way down.  The museum is located at a former Air Force base that was deactivated in 1995.  They had a pretty good collection of aircraft, but nothing real extraordinary. Here are a few pictures:

An SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane from the Cold War era:

A B-29, the aircraft that ended WWII by dropping the two Atomic Bombs:

A B-52, still in active service 55 years after the last one rolled off the assembly line:

A North American B-25, the airplane that took part in Doolittle's raid on Tokyo in 1942:

Anyway, pretty standard stuff.

I headed south on CA 99 to Bakersfield and the east on CA 178 to Ridgecrest.  The terrain was rather hilly and boy, is it dry:

Not real exciting today.  Tomorrow I'll be in Kingman, AZ and should be in Phoenix on Thursday.

Miles today:  325
Total to date:  11,991