Road trip! Part 1

I wasn't sure it would actually happen, and now it is: the California road trip. Woohoo!

Before I went off to the farm, I realized that I wanted to go on a road trip. And lo and behold, probably less than a week later, my aunt Judy called me to ask if I wanted to drive out to California with her to visit my cousin Matthew. Hot dog! I thought. It's perfect! And so here I am, at Matthew's apartment in San Jose, California. I drove 2,360 out of 2,753 miles, and visited 5 new-to-me states: Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. I thought I would share some fun tidbits from the trip thus far.

• Kansas. It cost us $2.50 to drive across Kansas. Not bad for a toll, but... it's Kansas. It's just not worth it.

• The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are flippin awesome! This is the site where the world land speed records have been set- 600.607 mph, I believe. It's a huge expanse of white that leads up to big rolling brown mountains. The salt itself is crunchy and grippy to walk on. I wish I'd had a bike so I could have ridden across the salt and explored the mountains.

• Beachaven Winery in Clarksville. No, it's nothing new to me. Yes, I still dig their wine. Yes, I bought a bottle of champagne.

• Wyoming is gorgeous. Vast expanses, beautiful skies, green mountains, and wind turbines. Also 75 mph speed limits and 0 cops. 80 mph is fast enough for me.

• New Belgium Brewing Co. in Ft. Collins, CO. Holy goodness, that's an AWESOME place! We did a beer tour there and got to taste lots of brewed goodness and see fun stuff (I highly recommend the Abbey... yum!). They have a really great twisty slide inside, and I got to slide down it on the tour. I could have slid down it for at least 30 minutes, but I held back for the good of the group. Annie, our tour guide, was from Knoxville, so we chatted and hung out a little during the last two beer samplings, and then she gave me 20% off the beer I bought. We also got to eat some chocolate and write postcards that they provided. How awesome is that?? Please, for your own sake, visit them.

• While in Ft. Collins, we hung out and chatted with Saja, an old friend of mine I hadn't seen in 10 years. She went to visit friends out there and never came back to TN. She's got a pretty sweet house in Old Town, complete with a music studio. Saja plays clawhammer banjo and is in a band called Storm Mountain. It was great to see her again!
  

• Driving across Nevada gets a little monotonous. The northern portion of the state is wide, and it all looks very brown. And scrubby. And then there's more brown and scrubby. Everywhere. I won't speak of Kansas; I think I've blocked it from my mind.

• Donner's Pass is a pretty sweet drive. It's the section of I-80 in northern California, right after you leave Nevada. I wished I'd been able to drive it in a BMW instead of a minivan, but that may have just earned me a speeding ticket. Once we passed from Nevada into California, the terrain changed pretty quickly to really tall mountains with lots of evergreen trees. The actual road is really rough and very windy and fun.

• When we did get into California, there was an agricultural checkpoint. I wondered if I had magically been to Canada and back without knowing it. It turns out they're attempting to control the spread of some bugs that are found on produce east of the Rockies, so they confiscated some of our apples. For real. I had 2 apples left from Reid's Orchard, and that man did not take them. Oh no, he did not. That would not have been acceptable. I made him take the red delicious apples from the grocery store.
  

• California traffic is crazy. My experience has been that it's either very fast or a dead halt, and people change lanes really quickly. Normally, when there are loads of cars on the road, I like to take my time and make sure I'm not going to run into anyone, but these drivers are all about speediness. I kinda like it. It feels like I'm in a video game.

• Orange trees. Lemon trees. Lime trees. Pomegranate trees. They're everywhere here- it blows my mind. I walked down the street the other day and picked a pomegranate. I picked a few lemons and limes today at Everett Ridge Winery. It's hard to process. I think tomorrow I will walk around and ask people if I can harvest fruit from trees in their yard. I may get a little hardcore and take a wooden crate to put all of the harvest in. I may make several trips. I have no shame. Thank you, farm-worker worldview.

• Despite the Mormon thing, Utah was pretty cool. I kind of have a thing about Mormonism. It just seems odd. I am suspicious. I was suspicious of Utah. But the salt was fun.

• It's been a new experience to be west of the Mississippi. I can handle cold out here a lot better just because it's not nearly as humid. I've worn denim skirts a few days. It's pretty awesome.

Lots of fun adventures on the road! While we were navigating Sacramento and San Francisco, the right side of the lower half of my body was burning a little, so I'm really glad to be out of the car for a while. But we got here, and I'm really glad. Stay tuned for more!