Traveling. I live next to California, and (some people would say that I'm risking hyperbole, but such people are shamefully wrong) California is undeniably the best place in the entire world, so I have to go there at every available opportunity.
Look at those mountains! That lake! Which is Mono Lake, by the way, a body of water 350 miles from the The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula. But 350 miles is not enough miles to stop a gigantic, sickening metropolis from destroying an ecosystem. Back in the '40s, after LA had killed the Owens Valley (another astonishingly spectacular place) and Owens Lake, the greedy beast turned her thirsty gaze Northward and started sipping poor Mono. The city stopped draining the lake about 15 years ago by court order and now it's slowly returning to its old saline self.
Whereas last year I went to Pinnacle Mountain a lot and sometimes to the Ouachitas. Not that those are bad, but California, man. California. The thing is, you're thinking, "hey, so they have beaches, a nice city (SF, obv), some big trees, but they don't have everything." Well, you're wrong. They have EVERYTHING. Everything done well.
The Owens Valley, once a wealthy farming area. See "Chinatown" for the reason that it no longer is.
Whoa buddy. After a long but visually appealing drive on US395 and CA190, one is presented with the option of pulling 1/2 mile off the road to Father (Insert Irish Name Here) Point a few miles after entering Death Valley National Park. I've never seen such an astonishing vista. The view is to 20 miles on the other side of the valley, which drops about 3-4000 feet from where you see the car parked. I wanted to put the car on that little peninsula of road you can see back there but there was a particularly nasty section that I didn't want to risk. That's the Panamint Valley, by the way; Death Valley is on the other side of the mountains in the background.
These are some excellent dunes which killed my camera, but it was pretty much worth it because I got to roll down them and generally experience some dumb glee that I haven't had in a while.
After a full day and a half of exploring Death Valley and environs, I decided to go to LA for no better reason than it was only three hours away. It was a questionable choice, and there were great moments, but it was on the whole not terribly spectacular. On the way back, CALTRANS failed to update their road conditions report, and so I took a long and unnecessary detour because I thought that the Sierras were pretty much impassable, and ended up buying unnecessary snow chains and then, when in Nevada, passed a Sheriff and got pulled over by NHP, who happened to also be there right then, so I got two tickets, and I already got a ticket in October- immediately after getting out of a defensive driving course, too; we're talking 5 or 10 minutes here- and I just got a letter saying that I can't renew my insurance because I didn't tell them I moved to Nevada. Just so you can see that not EVERYTHING is great.
Although I did get that promotion at work. Starting tomorrow I'm going to be in charge of 11 people, all of whom I have been working with since August and most of whom applied for the same promotion. Should be interesting.
Life!
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