Over the 4th of July weekend my family and I took a short trip up north of LA with our trailer to stay near one of the lakes that way.

One of the days we took a drive further north to explore. Initially we had just decided to drive somewhere without much clear intention but ended up getting close to Bakersfield and as neither my wife nor I had been there before we thought we would check it out.

We found downtown to be pretty much deserted and not much appeared to be open. We did find a couple of large antique malls open which suited us just fine and had ourselves a good browse around picking up a few bargains as we went.

Woolworth’s is an old store brand that I didn’t realize had made it to the US. In the UK it disappeared into bankruptcy a coupe of decades ago but when I was young, it was the place to go for lower cost items from clothing to records and sweets (candy) to household goods. I understand in the US it came under the heading of a ‘five and dime’. I’m assuming by the near identical branding they are one and the same entity

There were a few people we saw but most of the place was silent and we also took a little time to see what else was there.

There was some interesting street art and some of the buildings were quite interesting and I was able to get a few photographs here and there so despite the COVID-19 induced solitude it turned out to be a nice afternoon for all of us and we will surely be back when things are a little more back to ‘normal’.