Southern California Rarity

When you cache in Southern California, you get used to see things a certain way and when things end up differently, you sometimes do a double take.  At the minimum, you stare and try to make some sense of what your seeing.

This was the case when I dropped my son off at Santa Cruz last month.  I ended up traveling south along the 101 through the Salinas Valley.  Driving on the freeway doesn't afford you much time to really look at the scenery and because of its location, you really can't see down into the valley very well either.  However, when I ended up on a side road looking for a couple of caches, I noticed the Salinas River, flowing with water.

Looking at a map, this one is fed by coastal mountain streams, which in late September would be very dry as the rainy season has been pretty much done since mid-March.  Lake Nacimento reservoir also feeds this river, so either the powers that be had an abundance of excess water, or they were letting water go in anticipation of the upcoming wet season a few months down the road.  Either way, it made for a very pretty pastoral picture of the Salinas Valley.

Picture was taken at or near the following geocache:
Binary Blues - Black Gold - by Just a Short Walk