California

Traveling to California is an adventure. There are lots of things to see. Let’s review a few – mainly what I saw last week:

California Redwoods:
There are two kinds of very large trees and three kinds of very old trees in California. The large ones are redwoods and sequoia. The very old ones are these two plus the bristlecone pine. They can be 2000 years old or more. Think back to a time before these trees were confined to parks. They could roam free among the mountains and canyons.

Redwoods are coastal trees. Walking around on the forest floor can get really dark when the morning fog is rolling in. Many redwoods are over 300 feet tall. That’s a lot of tree.
Sequoia and bristlecone pines are high mountain trees – we saw those on other trips. This was a coastal trip.

California Roads:
In California they don’t have a lot of extra money for road sign paint so “canyon” is spelled “cyn.” They have numerous other cost saving techniques, such as neglecting pavement and guard rails on much of the coastal highway. It’s easier just to put up a sign once in a while that says, “Ruf Rd in Cyn.” Or “Crvs Ahed.”

We found a traffic report news station near Frisco and they spent a lot of time talking about light rail projects. San Jose has its own light rail. Sounds about the same as the Greater Newcastle area with signs, news, and propositions about light rail.

California Seagulls:
The bird books tell us there’s no such thing as a “seagull,” it’s supposed to be called a “gull.” Then you can apply the first name to tell what type of “gull” it is. Thus you have herring gull, mew gull, laughing gull, and California gull. That’s right, they have their own gull. It’s a general availability bird but California claims it.

California Motels:
They have plenty of places to stay in Cal. It’s a little daunting. They have funky signs and a few are just plain old crappy. Then, of course, the usual places are there. That’s what we stayed in, the usual places. They provide free high speed internet access (if you’re used to dial up, that is). I found it’s pretty slow because so many others were sharing the pipe.

The places we stayed had breakfast. You can get eggs, tofu, waffles, and nanners – and some actual food, too. Shari’s has better breakfast, but the motel food comes with the room, so might as well.

California Parks:
I have to admit one of the nice things about their parks is that they have restrooms. You can’t say that about all states, particularly Oregon. At my age it’s good to be able to check the GPS for a nearby park and expect to find porcelain (or a facsimile). Nebraska solves that issue by providing lonely roadsides. Clever.

California is also a “public beach” state in that people can’t “own” a beach and keep you off. This is good because they have such a long coast. Every town has a beach/park where you can go walk in the sand and watch surfers.

California Surfers:
We happened to be there for higher than normal surf and lots of people were out riding around on surf boards. I can’t figure out why. It has several things I don’t like – water, cold water, big waves, wind, surfers, and sharks. Oh, and jellyfish.

California Elephant Seals:
Elephant seals are big and they have a rookery near San Simeon on Big Sur. Prime beach property. They lie on the beach and use their flippers to toss sand on their backs. Other than that they seem to sleep. But they’re really big. We also saw sea lions in a couple of places and they’re not as big as elephant seals. But noisy.

California Condors:
Big Sur is home to a group of condors that nature dudes are trying to reestablish. These are very large birds and really interesting looking. We saw four. The head is bright orange and they have a lot of white under their wings. I didn’t have a good way to get photos because they were way above us. One was in the company of a turkey vulture and it looked small in comparison.

California:
Gasoline prices are down and it’s fun to get out on the open road. The weather was good and most of the food was good. The trip was good.

Al