I am back from my latest adventure to the Bay Area. I know, this looks like another selfie I already posted, but it isn’t. Just a good photo of San Francisco from the hills on the other side of the bay… with me in it. YAY!
So, you may remember that I told you about the coastal highway of California being closed in the middle, due to a huge earth slide. It might be closed for a year. So, instead of taking that route, and showing you, once again, pictures of elephant seals and the Pacific Ocean as seen from the cliffs high above it, I had to head inland after leaving my little cousins in Santa Cruz.
Sorry, one more photo of the San Francisco Bay, while I explain how my Google maps on my phone sent me East from the coast, and back to Highway 5… yes, the long, boring, but fast route that we usually take to the Bay Area. The one that runs lengthwise up the Central Valley. But when I got to the top of the mountains just North of Los Angeles, I hit traffic… way up in the pass… which, I assumed, meant that I would be in L A traffic for a week or more.
But I wasn’t. I, along with hundreds of other drivers and a bunch of big rig truckers, were directed off the highway by a Highway Patrol cop. The whole freeway was closed, because of some big fire.
The next thing I know, I am heading East on some little, two-lane highway, along the spine of that mountain range. I had always assumed the mountains extended to either side of that pass like normal mountains… you know… pointy and lumpy and reaching for the sky.
But, it turns out, the whole top of that mountain range, at least this part of it, was actually shaped like a huge trough.
It was split down the middle into a huge, shallow valley. First, I saw thousands of little oil wells. This struck me as odd. If you drill for oil on the top of a mountain range, don’t you have to drill all the way down past the level of the base of the mountains, and then down from there to the oil? I guess not.
Next, I drove through miles of Joshua trees.
If you want to know about them, you should Google it.
All I know is that in one post I did, a few days ago, I promised I would show you a part of California that you have probably never seen before.
After a while, I ran into these strange rock formations.
I think it is sandstone.
Sandstone is very soft, so the rock weathers in interesting ways.
There were also lots of little holes and caves in them.
And I liked the way they projected out of the surrounding dirt.
Anyway, that is about it for this part of my life.
My younger daughter is graduating high school today, and I got stuff to do.
Carry on, and try to have an adventure. See something you haven’t seen before, and share it with us.
Pouring My Art Out 