TODAY’S MUSINGS
It’s a long way from St. George, Utah back to the Bay Area. The only way to go when the mountain passes are blocked with snow is to first drive south to Las Vegas then turn west until Bakersfield and then head back north. There’s a lot of it that’s pretty boring. But we usually manage to fill the time. Here are some of our random road thoughts.
Don’t take the 215 bypass around Las Vegas. It’s really long, has stop lights and is pretty dangerous. As bad as the traffic can be in Las Vegas, it’s still way faster than the bypass.
I saw a Grimway carrot truck. I have to say I was disappointed to find out that baby carrots are just remodeled regular carrots. Somehow I imagined fields of tiny carrots.
Another truck was filled with pigs. Imagine your life as a pig these days. They don’t want to fatten you up anymore. So you spend your pig life on a diet and then they kill you. Poor pigs. And poor humans having to eat the horrible product that is modern-day pork.
It’s interesting to see the seasons change along the road. After you leave the Mohave Desert, you spend about 5 or so hours in agricultural land. The almond trees have finished blooming and have leafed out but the pistachio trees are still leafless. Around Wasco there are fields of commercially produced roses. It’s really pretty in the summer. What a weird looking plant sorghum is. Did you know that California grows lots of cotton? In the late fall there are giant truck-size bales of it.
What’s with “speed enforced by aircraft?” That has to be bogus. The only plane we saw that was lower than 25,000 feet was a crop duster.
Why are there so few soft-sided semi trucks on U.S. roads? In Europe they are everywhere.
When we were at the rest stop between Baker and Barstow there were lots of ravens around. They were vying for the best rock to pick up and fly off with.  Do ravens build their nests out of rocks? Do only desert ravens build their nests out of rocks because there isn’t anything else to use?
And finally, I’m not usually a fan of religious billboards. I know it’s a free country but I wish people would keep their beliefs to themselves. But there was a clever one in Bakersfield. It had a spigot with water running out of it into a wine glass. Along the was it turned into red wine. It was visually interesting.
So that’s some of the stuff noticed along the road. Towards the end of the trip it started raining torrentially so it was hard to concentrate on anything but the road and the traffic. There’s been way too much rain in California lately.Â