Along the Road in California

Here are a few scenes from our recent road trip to California...

Date palms

Joshua trees

The best part of a hot driving day

This photo is special to me because it shows the turnoff to Marinwood, where I spent some of my childhood 

And you know where we're headed from here. Stay tuned...

Industrial California

When we traveled recently through California, much of the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful.

But not all of it, as these photos taken along I-580 show.  After all, industry has to happen somewhere.

Clear Skies: Two Hilltop Views for Skywatch

Looking down on St. David, Arizona

For this week's Skywatch, I thought I'd share two very different hilltop views, both taken on our recent trip through parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. 

The first photo, above, was taken from an odd little dirt road that we found ourselves on--one of those roads that looks like it should be paved when you find it on the road map. There we were, out in the sizzling desert on a never-ending and ominously-narrowing bit of empty dustiness. It was hot, it was still, and our car was the only one in sight. When we stopped to appreciate the silence, I took this photo looking back at the little town of St. David. It would be hard to imagine that any hardy traveler might ever be out there on foot. 

A little further on, a huge UPS semi-truck pulled out of a ranch road and left us eating his dust until we finally came to pavement again. We wondered what long-awaited and very large package had been delivered at the ranch house--a nice cool refrigerator, air conditioner, or chest freezer, we hoped. Have I mentioned that it was HOT that day?

Near Petaluma, California

The second shot couldn't have been in more different terrain. We were traveling a winding two lane (paved!) road back from the northern California coast toward the city of Petaluma. This view looked like the perfect definition of gentle and charming countryside to me--almost as if one might spot a hobbit or two, journeying along on some trail under the trees.

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May Sky, Wind, and Snow for Skywatch

Wind power in the Palm Desert, California

I snapped this shot as we drove through southern California last week. We were surprised to see the snow still on the mountains surrounding the Palm Desert, near Palm Springs.

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Roses Like Weeds! Geraniums in the Ground!

Somebody's geraniums 

We just got back from a quick trip to California to see kids and grandkids. It's so funny for me to visit California and feel cold, but that's what living in the desert has done to us. It's definitely cooler there in northern California than here in southern New Mexico, but the humidity also makes a big difference.

For example, today (I'm writing this on Monday, May 30th) it was 90 degrees F. at noon with 14% humidity here in New Mexico; where we stayed in California, a bit north of Sacramento, it was 68 at noon today with 50% humidity. We are long past needing any sweaters at home--we threw a couple into the suitcases before we left, almost as an afterthought, and wore them constantly. When we went out to the coast (today the temp there is 56 degrees, with 71% humidity) we couldn't have done without long sleeves.

Even though the weather in California is cooler at this time of year than ours, it is much more temperate year round than in our high desert--so we see plants in the ground there that we are used to keeping in pots and taking in during the winter. I had forgotten that in my childhood in San Francisco the geranium bushes in our front yard were almost as tall as my childhood self, so it all came back to me when we admired other people's gardens on our morning walks.

Of course, I had to stop and take some photos of a stranger's house where I saw geraniums growing right there in the ground. And my stepdaughter tells me that the roses in her yard grow like weeds without any special feeding or care.

Going Home Again

Our new home in the 1950s

My parents bought their first brand new home in 1956. It was in one of the new suburbs that were being built outside of San Rafael, in what was to become northern California's very fancy and expensive Marin County.

At the time, these houses ranged in price from the high 12's--I guess I need to translate that, in view of what has happened to house prices since. I mean that the prices ranged for $12,950 to $19,950--hard to believe now, I know! I just did a price search and the cheapest home in this area is currently listed at $599,000, even with the recent dive in real estate prices.

For that original price, people were getting some very nicely designed homes. Ours had a public area--living, dining, and kitchen--that was built around a massive brick wall that contained a two sided fireplace open to the living and dining rooms; and a large indoor barbecue, complete with spit, copper hood, and firebox that added to an already special kitchen.

The kitchen barbecue, spit and all

The kitchen contained General Electric's very best and latest appliances--countertop burners, a wall mounted oven, a built-in dishwasher, and a washer/dryer combination that no one ended up liking very much. My dad eventually took it out and built a matching cupboard for the space left, and we put our replacement washer and dryer out in the garage, as did most of our neighbors. The kitchen was small, but very workable, and opened into the dining room so the cook could have company. The most interesting appliances in the kitchen were the wall-mounted countertop-height fridge and freezer--three little doors, conveniently placed right at eye level. I've often wondered how people managed when those fridges wore out and needed replacement--there was literally no space for a big fridge.

Image from an old GE advertisement

The living room had a peaked wall of glass that rose up to a beamed ceiling and opened out onto a covered flagstone patio that my dad built.

At the other end of the house there was a long hall that included two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and the first master bedroom suite we had ever seen--a large bedroom, two closets with an adjoining dressing area and built-in dressing table, and a bathroom of its own. This was fancy living after our small 2 bedroom, 1 bath home in San Francisco.

My family owned the Marinwood house until the year after my father died. We kids had moved away, and my mother moved to a smaller condominium.

In the 1990's, on a trip to California, I took a photo of the house as it was then. The little tree we had planted out front decades before was giving lots of shade. The garage was converted, so the driveway was littered with cars--not a look that my parents would have appreciated.

This photo was taken in the summer of 1998--different paint job, more cars

Taking Another Look at California

The little Sunset Distric house in San Francisco

My parents moved our little family of three (Bucksnort came along a little later) to California from Maine when I was an infant. I grew up in San Francisco, just a block from the beach in a little house they sold in 1955 for $11,000; then in Marin County, in one of the suburbs that were springing up in those post-World War II decades, in a house they bought for exactly, I remember, $19,950. In recent years, either house was valued in the six hundred thousands, although prices have fallen a bit lately, even in these expensive areas.

By the time I was 21, I was anxious to leave California, finding fault with the traffic and ever-increasing development. After leaving, I lived in British Columbia, Washington state, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Connecticut, then New Hampshire and New Mexico once again.

I still see those things when I go back to California for a visit--crowded highways and the resulting smog, and endless developments that fill up the farm and ranch land that I remember from my childhood. But I was surprised, on this trip, to find that I was enchanted by the other parts of the landscape--the deserts, the mountains, and most of all, the beautiful rolling foothills, grassy and studded with bay trees and live oaks, still festooned with the mistletoe I remember from my childhood. I had brought along lots of knitting to work on during the many hours of riding in the car, but found that it sat there in my lap while I admired the scenery.

Northern California foothills

California Desert Skies for Skywatch Friday

After our years in New Mexico, it turns out that some of my favorite California landscapes during our recent trip were the ones around the Mojave Desert.

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Road Trip Reading

California palms, always fascinating to road trippers


Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson (1989)


While on our recent trip to California, I read a fine road trip book by Bill Bryson. It was his first book from way back in 1989, Lost Continent, and I could sense from the start that he was a) very young (I checked--37 or so counts as young to me), b) very grumpy about his country of birth, and c) so grumpy and critical that he had left to live in another country altogether. I recognized the signs, having followed the same path myself, although I had once gone to live in Canada and Bryson had left for England.

As he wrote about the 38 states he traveled through, he put down town after town in such a way that pretty much indicated that nothing here was going to please him. I was understanding of his malaise, and hopeful that as he got older that he might begin to appreciate the finer points of America. Indeed, I discovered on his web site that he had brought his family back from England when he was in his mid-forties, just as I had eventually returned to my country. Of course, he left again to live in England within the decade, but that might have been because of the rootlessness one finds after trying to go home again. Who knows?

Parts of this book were hysterically and overtly funny; other parts were sly and trickily humorous, as when Bryson dryly tells us that "Booker T. Washington...was a remarkable man. A freed slave, he taught himself to read and write, secured an education and eventually founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the first college in America for blacks. Then, as if that were not achievement enough, he finished his career as a soul musician, churning out a series of hits in the 1960s on the Stax record label with the backup group the MGs." Or, when he sneaks in this one: "Lancaster County is the home of the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish and Mennonites. The Mennonites are named after a well-known brand of speed stick deodorant." Honestly, this stuff reminds me of some of the more ambitious conversations between Auntie Bucksnort and myself.

Something that especially struck me was when the youthful Bryson was grumbling about the late 80s' suburban sprawl and the way that people, after visiting a tidy and picturesque Colonial Williamsburg, didn't just return home to restore their old buildings and to beautify their towns with trees and flowers. It occurred to me that almost thirty years later, this very thing has been happening with great results. A good many of the northern California cities and towns that we visited had well-preserved central "old towns," in addition to their more modern (and sprawly) shopping areas. Here are some links that will get you started on an old town tour.

Grass Valley (very walkable, dog friendly with dog water dishes set outside shops)
Gridley (has a small old town area)
Old Sacramento
Placerville