We enter Interstate 80. The vegetation zone here is blue oak woodland with live oak and foothill pine. Also there is Fremont cottonwood, alders, buckeye and a few sycamores.
Ground cover includes blue lupin, yellow mustard, and blue vetch.
The grass is still green because of the continuing rains in this El Nino year. The Loomis Basin, before Newcastle, is older metamorphics that are harder than the granites that intruded into them. This is the Smartville Complex which is largely basalts metamorphosed into greenstones. The granites that intruded are 140 mya. There are sheeted dikes in the roadcut.