Homeward Bound

Day 22:

Well, we did it. We made it from Twin Falls to the Bay Area in one piece. All told, the trip took 10.5 hours with two stops for gas, two meals (both drive through) and a Starbucks/Jamba Juice stop. We made it home just as the low fuel lamp turned on. Oh, and gas got cheaper while we were gone.

The start of today's journey reminded me of the early part of our trip across the Hi Line. We did over a hundred miles from Twin Falls, ID to Wells, NV on a two lane undivided road they called State Route 93. It was empty for long stretches broken only occasionally by small towns. The only difference was today's drive had a much more Nevada feel to it: rolling scrubland back-dropped by tall, equally barren mountains all obscured by the haze you only get when temperatures near 100.

After 100 miles of hair-raising passes, I had never been so happy to see a four-lane interstate. I did learn a new trick: at the right zoom level, you can use your GPS to estimate good sight lines for passing. It would have been perfect if the GPS conveyed elevation information, but I was happy with knowing when I'd see the next lazy turn to the left so I could see all the oncoming traffic.

The first city we hit along I-80 in Nevada was Elko. There we were greeted by a giant casino (complete with Starbucks, thank you) and a highway information sign warning us that that I-80 was closed in 35 miles and that we should "plan other routes."
Huh? You can't just close an interstate and not provide a detour! After I got my wits back, I looked at our maps and GPS and decided that there really wasn't much I could tell about alternate routes until I knew exactly where the highway was closed. It was quite likely that there *was* no alternate route. We were just going to have to chance it.

As we neared the area, it became apparent what was going on: more fire. All of the western lands were ablaze. Luckily the sign was slightly behind the times. The fire had burned all the way up to the eastbound side of the freeway and had been controlled by the five rigs lining the empty lanes with their flashers on. The westbound lanes seemed fine - only the other side was closed. As we drove further, we began to see columns of vehicles lead by pilot cars. So both sides were both going to be okay.

We flew past Reno and the NV/CA border in the blink of an eye putting us suddenly back in the Sacramento suburbs. I tried to play newcomer and view California with the perspective gained from my last three weeks across the country. My first impression was that California understands the business of freeways. The *small* ones are three lanes on each side. There are Botts Dots everywhere (no plows to shear them off), K-rails to keep traffic separate and landscaped medians! It's also darn crowded. It's no wonder that you need five lanes. RVs? Rare. Trucks? Sure, but not as many. Lots of cars, and lots more of them "odd." I don't think I saw a Land Rover or a Porsche Cayenne my entire time out of California.

The landscape was also an eye-opener. The hills of unbroken gold (okay, brown) can really be pretty in the same way as the even green of Idaho's rolling farmland. Compared to the Plain States, there are a lot more trees to break up the predominant gold. The trees aren't planted as occasional windbreaks in long picket lines or in protective circles around lone farmsteads. They really seem to be an integral part of the landscape whether it be hill or field.

The cities and towns, with buildings much more crowed together than the rest of the trip, also seemed to have a lot trees. Everything felt "manicured" or planned. The trees happened just so often and there were no open fields sprinkled in between the bits of civilization. You'd have long stretches of wall to wall development followed by shorter stretches of relative wild land.

To round out my state impressions:
South Dakota: Like North Dakota (flat, lots of farms, few trees) only with slight patches of brown hinting that the natural rainfall isn't quite enough to keep everything alive outside the farms. This actually started in southern Minnesota.
Wyoming: Fields of browning grass give way to more uneven land and then mountains covered with conifers
Idaho: The southern regions are what I remember from my childhood: rolling fields of green, fit for use as the WindowsXP background.
Nevada: Desert, pure and simple. More dirt than scraggly plants eeking out a living.
California: Dry, even in the mountains. Even where there are green, healthy trees, they live on a carpet of dead grass. The farmlands between Sacramento and the Bay Area could be in the Dakotas only they aren't as big and there are more trees. The Cities of the Bay Area have a lot of trees. This might be what Minnesota would look like if it had this many buildings and if you could find a vantage point that high.

Highlights:
1. Home. Live cats and a happy dog.
2. Cleaning out the van. No, really.
3. Getting back into the swing of things. While I enjoyed my time off, my time to try on new hats, I really am of this place and things are different here. The stereotypical Californian is the laid-back surfer dude, but there's a pace and and edge to life around the major commerce centers that is unmistakable.

Quirks:
1. While I'm in the act of passing you is not the time to put more weight on your lazy accelerator foot. Really.
2. For as much as I praised the freeways out here, the slow lanes in the mountains (where chains are required in winter) were probably the worst existing roads we traveled. Maybe that's why we were seeing constant roadwork in other states.