California

I landed in Palm Springs on Friday night, very late. By eleven the next day Paul and I had packed up his life and were on the road. California, here I am. I don’t like California, or at least not the southern part. It is very dry, sunny, and has that reddish tinge to the mountains and rocks. It’s just not something I enjoy very much; I am not a desert person. I like the rain and cold and all that comes with it. One interesting thing in the south was the vast fields of wind mills. As we traveled north the first night we settled in Bishop. I wanted to go in to Yosemite the next day and do some hiking. We went to dinner and as we ordered Paul asked the waitress how far of a drive it was to Yosemite. She said, “Oh, you don’t want me to answer that do you?” Apparently the main road was blocked with snow and where we were it would be about five hours to get into the park, which meant five hours back as well. Ten hours seemed like too much and the first day was done with the decision to just keep going. As we got into northern California the Mountains became more prominent and the terrain became more to my liking. Most of the driving on day two was through mountains and by rivers. Crawling uphill and plunging down. At one point I was going about 95mph when I looked in the rearview to see a police car closing fast. I expected to get some speeding tickets and was obviously speeding so I just took a deep breath and waited for the lights to flash. However, they just followed for a while and then passed, no ticket this time. By the end of the second day we crossed into Oregon, Medford I think. Crossing into Oregon was like flipping a switch. California was sunny, Oregon was cloudy and rainy. These rain and clouds would follow us for the rest of the trip.