Good Thing I Take Photos (and there are a lot of them)

Or I would never remember where I was on this trip! Last post, I was getting into California. Today I am in Salinas, California, today's mission accomplished!

There were a lot of cloudbursts of lightning and hard rain and I think maybe hail for a few minutes there. I'd driven through sunshine and had stopped for the night when that happened. With all the flash flood warning signs I saw, being stationary felt very good.

So many rainbows!

For a long time it felt like I was the only person on the road

Just another cool bridge

Wow! I wasn't expecting this for another hour!!

This is the last road that opened up when signs said it was closed. HOORAY!!

Sometimes I just take an exit to stop driving awhile.
These birds happened to be in this parking lot,
where a man was throwing bread to them.

I didn't mean to get on Rt. 66, but I did. A couple of times.

Here is where I turned the corner and was immediately faced with the lowest underpass I've ever seen. It had a height clearance of EIGHT FEET!
I had no idea how tall the Turtle was but there was no place to turn soooooo...

I've stood on the bridge on Culebra many times and watched boats go under the bridge. Boats too tall for the bridge. All that flashed through my mind, thinking of the Turtle's roof being peeled back like a sardine can. Thankfully, the only sound I heard was the antenna hitting each beam of the overpass. My face actually hurt from the Silent Scream expression I'm sure was on it. I made sure to leave town a different way. Very different, as it turned out.

There were lots of tiny houses along the way through town leaving Needles

Cities and farms. It works.

And in came the rain.

This is really how black the sky got.

But soon, another rainbow! It was definitely wine thirty.

Wine and my co-pilot

He has the right idea

The storm made for an amazing sunset view

Morning light on the mountains and onward!

Following Ms. GPS into the mountains

Where the hell am I??

Instead of being at Zaco's, celebrating Ann's birthday yesterday, I was driving across the Mohave desert. It's a big, empty place with a lot of long steep inclines. The scariest was the first summit, where we in the truck lane were almost at the top and then slowed down even more, to about 25 or 30 mph. At the top, a semi lay on its side, with emergency trucks and a tow truck already there. I cannot imagine how that could have happened, but it did. I think I might have been the last one through because there was no traffic behind me for the next half an hour. Which is about half as long as it took me to calm down inside my head and belly. 

After that, it was just a lot more climbing. I stopped at a really beautiful rest area in the middle of nowhere but advertised as a good safe spot. It was all that. Beautiful, safe and I slept better than I have in ages. Climbing will do that to you. Even in a Turtle. 

Ok, the connection at the library is very, very slow, so that will wrap this up for now. 

Keep knocking on wood, the end portion of this trip is not far away now. I think even the Turtle can smell the barn in the distance. 

Have a trouble-free Thursday. Do something tall.