The Windmill Posts

Having just crossed another state line, with a side quest to see the Donner location, I am finally entering California. The goal.  I’ve spent five days crossing over half the country getting here as fast as possible, blowing past some interesting sights.  I’ll come back to those some day.

The landscape is instantly shifting into more dramatic rocky canyons, interesting hills and mountains and other rugged land.  I just can’t help thinking of the Donner party and those that came before and after.  Taking wagons with wooden wheels across this terrain must have been a nightmare.  And that’s just the flat stuff.  Taking passes, who knows how well developed they were or even existed.  I know the Donners ended up cutting their own path for a time.

The number of people who crossed our country, from those who had no tracks to follow all the way up to the modern immigrants who had completely different problems.  It’s hard to be an American.

The hills themselves are covered in grass, but the grass dies pretty early on in the summer.  So if you show up in February, it’s all plush and beautiful and green.  It’s not February though. So what we have is the dead grass mountains.  There’s shrubbery, some of which is dead or dormant. There are also trees, which typically aren’t dead. I don’t know what kind they are. It could be Eucalyptus for all I know. And when I say dead I mean they’re in a seasonal state where they look dead but aren’t.

Between hills, quite often there’s a creek or a river or something that cuts through them. Today there have been a number of signs warning about it being a gusty crossing. Some of them even have windsocks to let you know which direction and how strong.  So, I put my top up and my air conditioner on and turned my vehicle into a boring car. 

I actually looked it up on the internet to see if I should have my top down or up. I thought it would be down because then the gusts would go right over you and you’re less of a thing that could get gusted.  Apparently, top up is better because the wind will go over you in a way that the car was designed.  I guess I was just impressed there were roads with windsocks. 

An interesting thing about the passes I’ve gone over so far is that I have very rarely popped my ears on them.  When I lived in Hawaii, going over the Pali mountains involved standard switchbacks and some tunnels, and they were generally quite lovely. I used to play with my ears when I crossed these mountains. I would keep my mouth open, but close my mouth in the back you get this super cool popping sensation when you go over the hill.

Upon entering California, I realized I needed gas. I stopped (or tried to stop) at a Sinclair but it was next to a resort casino. Much like the inside of a casino, they decided the parking lots should be confusing enough to trap you.  But eventually I found my way out of the blacktop forest.  It was like an IKEA where they really wanted you to see everything they had to offer and made the path through everything more like a maze with one direction to go.

From there, it was a matter of getting on I-80 and crossing quite a few passes. At some point it was 68 degrees. Quite a drop!  I should have had the constant altimeter on just to know how high we were on those passes, but it was pretty high. The ears popped. It was pretty good.

My car doesn’t do live traffic on the GPS.  So when I punched in the address of the hotel in San Francisco, the car said “Oh, no problem, just take the Bay Bridge!”

Google maps, however, said “You should go way out of your way and go over the Golden Gate Bridge.  Which I was totally fine with.  The traffic on the east side of San Francisco was just dark scary colors on the map.  My route took 30 minutes off the ETA and a much prettier drive.

I haven’t been to San Francisco yet, but I gotta say I haven’t seen any level of aggressive driving here or anywhere like Minneapolis has.

I’m going to say that 80 is the loneliest highway.  Because it’s full of cars. We’re all here, but we’re all here alone.  We’re all here but we’re all separate and lonely. Waiting for this traffic to move.

It’s funny, most people would consider 50 in the middle of nowhere to be boring. But I actually find this to be far more boring, because it’s all just the same stuff you see everywhere. None of it’s unique and it’s just all there making everything look the same.

Eventually, I drove through the Robin Williams tunnel and burst out upon the Golden Gate Bridge..