Day 20 - Root Beer and Cheese, Please

Day 20 - Lodi to Oakdale.
We are sitting inside enjoying breakfast. Today it looks pretty much the same except for the cars parked out front.

Just a little guy. The record at the Pumpkin World Championships later this week will be 2,058 pounds.

Now Donna thinks that she guessed way too low.

We had to go by here since root beer is Doug's favorite cold beverage and he has even brewed some himself.

Some sidewalk art in the same area.

We are a long way from the forest but given what we've seen the last couple of weeks, this is a good message for everyone to see.

An egret just surveying his kingdom.

Hard to tell but we are making our way through part of Stockton on this bike freeway. The only trouble was, it didn't have any signing and we got a little turned around. We went through Stockton because we thought it would be easier to find lunch but, as it turned out, we spent so much more time navigating that we could have gone more distance the other route and found a good lunch spot sooner. Oh well.

We picked up some food at a market on the edge of town and then found this nice pumpkin patch farm with a table and chairs and cold drinks for sale.

We are finding that one of the advantages to touring in October is that most of the road construction project are done paving. All that new smoothness is sure fun and speedy. It is 90+F and we have a 10-12 mph tailwind besides.

Oakdale Cheese showed up just outside of town so, of course we had to stop. You do know that cheese is in the same basic food group as coffee and chocolate, don't you?

Way too many choices! Besides indulging in the samples, we did get a bag of cheese curds to go.

They had beautiful grounds as well.

Just in case you didn't believe us bragging about a tailwind.

Downtown Oakdale. Sure wish we had skipped Stockton as we would have arrived sooner.

Outside the Cowboy Museum and almost at the end of our trail for the day.