a good trip

I was thinking how perhaps one could just say "And then I drove to Fresno" but for me it was a giant adventure, I thought fascinating thoughts, everything was golden with meaning and happiness. This morning I was mopey, stressed, and desperate for something to change. And at noon I decided I was leaving town right away, not waiting for Saturday morning. Get the hell out! A vacation! Mountains! The open road! Rocks. So I threw some stuff in a backpack, took my pillow, picked up prescriptions, got my oil changed and the brakes and tires checked & was driving south by 1:15.

Stopped in Gilroy, where I bought gas and talked to a baseball team; at several "scenic overlooks" on Pacheco Pass (though not at dinosaur point, or the dam) and at one of them I found a little memorial cross with plastic flowers and toys and wondered what the story was. The hills were still a bit green, surprisingly so for this time of year because of the late rain.

Stopped in Los Banos (and I really want to go to Los Banos Donuts and the tiny historical museum. Stopped a bunch more at random places to take photos. Thought of the giant inland sea and tried (failed) to remember the dates, the millions-of-years-ago that it was, when it was an enormous bay. How long did it take for the land to become unsalty? Or did it become fresh at some point? Sang like crazy on the straight, empty stretch of road between Los Banos and Highway 99... Once I was out of Fresno (I stopped there too on the western outskirts) the road was beautiful and open again with more groves of peach, orange, and almond trees, vinyards, increasingly lush grass, cows, horses, a miniature horse farm and then a scary sign that said "Next 6 miles, flash flood zone"... and the foothills. Yay, real rocks! Granite-looking ones with big sweeping exfoliating bits and then knobby boulders eroded by wind. I saw some stuff that looked like sandstone but there was no turnoff. And then real rivers instead of just the cemented aqueducts. I thought of the long-ago canal systems in England and wondered what remains of that.

I was remembering all the times I went to Enchanted Rock, and then the great time I had driving through the southwest, doing stuff like going to Rockhound National Park, which is in the middle of totally nowhere in the desert and has no point of going there except you can take as many rocks as you want, and there are geodes and agates. M. and I were good travel partners as long as the land travelled was new to both of us, I think.

I stopped at many turnouts and scenic overlooks.

There is snow up here! We're above 6000 feet. Ice on the big pond here at the lodge... but of course half of Rook's family was in shorts and tshirts.

The kids are having a good time. They liked the flashlights and headlamps. Moomin had his green chameleon flashlight clipped to his pajamas just now and it is part of his Dinoninja persona ... his "lantern", right? He recited his "new poem" to me, which was Green Lantern's exact poem but with "Beware my power, Dino Ninja's light" at the end, said fast to fix the changed meter.

I will insist on driving Moomin in my truck tomorrow. He'll be less carsick, it will be quieter & less chaotic, and I refuse to get in a car driven by anyone here. That way I will also escape the inevitable singing that happens like they're some kind of wholesome, vile, disney movie, von trapp family, or cynthia voight novel wannabes.... I swear...

I'm cranky in my old age.

I have 2 packets of revisions but they are not the entire thing. I have not opened them yet and am hoping they do not say anything like "Radically restructure this!!!!" but are full of helpful cross-outs of my unnecessary commas.

Target due date, Wednesday...

Comments

[Mary]

Hope you made it back safe and sound and that your edits were minor and easy to fix. I'll check Flickr for pics...

[Wired]

My family does that singing-thing, too. We joke that it is a hazing ritual for potential spouses. My brother-in-law will not soon forget the drive to Portland (to visit Powell's, of course. Why else would one go to Portland?) that involved an impromptu recitive of ALL of Pirates of Penzance.

My husband's trauma was kid's road songs (Catalina Madelina Rubenstina Walladina Hogen-Bogan-Wogan).

Also, I feel for Moomin on the carsickness-front. I find that ginger pills and thoughtful contemplation of the horizon help.