Travel

  Raise your expectations. There’s much to see in Twentynine Palms. You might have been told that Twentynine Palms is in the middle of nowhere, not far from Death Valley. This is not completely true. Here are restaurants, hotels, banks, a library, Starbucks …the town has all the comforts of home, really. The desert architecture

As I read over the posts that I wrote on the California trip, I made a list of the things I learned on each day and linked the posts below. Today, as I re-write and re-edit, I come again upon thoughts of Amelia Earhart. Her name came up more than once. Like her I was

I spent most of the day driving, returning from Littlefield, Arizona to Fort Collins. I actually left before 6 a.m., and rolled up to my house at 5:45 p.m. But it wasn’t all bad, because as I drove I was thinking about the California pilgrimage, putting my life in order, so to speak. The 10

I have arrived in LIttlefield, Arizona, just on the far side of the Nevada border. It was a long, tiring drive. The morning began beautifully, with “Barely” showing me how he feeds the blue jays from his porch. That was the highlight of the day. After that, Cholame, then Bakersfield, and then the Mojave desert

Tomorrow, bright and early, I need to get back in the car and travel east. Toward Colorado. Which is not a bad place. Nor is work bad. Exactly. But you know. Today would be a day in San Luis Obispo. Doing my own kind of things. Walking the Labyrinth My day in San Luis Obispo

Up till now my central coast trip has been in and around Morro Bay. Today, I decided to go up Highway 1 to see the part of that road that clung precariously to the side of a mountain. This would be that part of Highway 1, driving to Big Sur. This trip would not go

It’s funny when you are born somewhere, like California, that has such a big cultural significance. California dreaming was an idiom and a song when I was a kid. I took it for granted. I knew nothing else, since I was born here, but California dreaming was something my dad experienced as a young man,

My father used to say that the indigenous Californians were less violent than the plains tribes. I didn’t think of that as a sign of a difference between the tribes themselves so much as the effect of the weather and geography of California. When you’re in California, particularly on the coast, with the sound of

Around noon I began to wonder how crazy I was to plan the long drive I was taking. The second day of 500 plus miles. Mile after mile of standing on the pedal and holding the wheel. It was uncomfortable. I wasn’t bored, though, actually. I was enjoying the drive, the country unfolding before me.