Fall was here, did you miss it?

If you live in SoCal as I do the chances are pretty good that Fall may have slipped by you and you won't get a seasonal change until after the Holidays when we get to the rainy season. Though much of this is changing thanks to our Global Temperature Changes that we are going through (Sorry, all you GOP ostriches there is a Warming problem). We of course will have our beautiful Holiday time here where the temps usually are in the 70-80 range and New Year's Day will be gorgeous so the Rose Bowl Parade and Game will show off the SoCal area to its best and all those snow bound mid-westerners will want to move here. I always pray for rain.
Took a short trip to the dried out Western Sierras last weekend (this weekend I must stay home to await a couch) and got only a couple of shots. This is a pix of an old barn and corral near Sequoia.

Enjoy

Tomorrow DST Ends

Having recovered from the cold, flu, mange, whatever I set out today to prove myself incorrect about SoCal. That being that I am so familiar with these environs that I prefer to travel out of the area to find new points of interest and new photo opportunities.
I left good old Oxnard and drove up to Ojai, then over the hill on the 33 to Hwy 166, nothing new in that except I discovered this old building along this High Plateau of the Maricopa Hwy.

I believe it is an old 'Shotgun' house from the 1910's

Left this and after being nearly blown off the road by a Ferrari club letting it out on this solitary straight stretch, I decided to go east instead of my usual turn west toward Santa Maria. I drove to Maricopa, where the flavored lawn treatment is tumbleweeds caught in the fence line.

Then it changed as I drove on to Taft, CA. I had not heard to this place but it is in the heart of the Midway-Sunset oil fields, home to the Lakewood Gusher that pushed 9 Million barrels of oil in 18 months before they got someone in from Texas who knew how to cap a well.
There's a interesting Oil Museum here where I sent longer than I imagined and made me decide to drive back the I-5 instead of heading got the coast.

Little gazebo with derrick from 1912 

Looking up that wooden derrick

An old Yale safe just rustin' away

An amazing place that reminded me of my college days in Oklahoma and the oilfields there in the panhandle.
All in all a most interesting day.