EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in the Bay Area, California
Distance - 570 miles
Time - 9.5 hours
Back on the road! On Monday I checked out of the hostel and tried to get some more mundane to-do list activities checked off, like getting Oliver's oil changed and finding an ATM. I could hardly believe I'd already driven 5,000 miles since leaving Tucson. I had lunch and wrote some emails from the Well Grounded Tea and Coffee Bar, a little cafe with delicious bagels and sandwiches in El Cerrito, and then headed back over the bridge for one more night with Elena and her flatmates. Elena was on a job interview in Berkeley, so I walked around the area for a few hours and sat in the dog park across from her apartment (after securing an amazing parking spot right across the street!), played with some dogs and wrote postcards while watching the sun set - it was a very low key but nice way to spend an afternoon/evening. Our big activity once everyone got home was to find a place to hang the new smoke detector! We couldn't reach the ceiling, but I did take a picture of our eventual solution - I thought it was very creative and fitting ;)
Tuesday was the first in a series of travel days. Elena was looking at Amtrak tickets to Fresno, but since I was driving right through there on my way to Henderson, NV I gladly offered her a ride - it was nice to have company for a few hours. Admittedly central California isn't the most photogenic place this time of year, kind of awkwardly not summer green and not winter tan, and since I had company I didn't end up taking many photos except of odd street signs. I did pass through what might now be my favorite town name - Chowchilla!
After dropping Elena off, I continued on the very long drive to Henderson (outside of Vegas) to visit the lovely Merry Hall! Merry and I met in 8th grade when she and her family moved to Denver from Amsterdam. Known amongst our group of friends for her love of throwing parties (especially for the Oscars!), Merry introduced me one of my long standing favorite tv shows, let me learn to french braid hair using her very patient head, and was the only person I know who actually wrote letters to her friends while we were in college on opposite coasts (which I was especially bad at returning - sorry!) We haven't seen each other since the summer before I left for Peace Corps and I've been terrible at keeping in touch - I don't think we stopped talking for a solid 4 hours until we went to bed! I wish I had planned to spend more time there, guess it just means I'll have to be better about calling/letter writing/visiting again soon.
The apartment has some of the original fixtures that have been painted over, so we tied the new smoke detector to the old fire alarm!
Ave 18 1/2, mysteriously missing Ave 18 or 19
Daytime moon
How exactly do you tell people that you live on "Zzyzx Rd"?
It's been a while since I've been driving at sunset
Hello Nevada!
Just outside of Henderson I drove past this huge array that I think might have been one of those solar condensing fields, with all the parabolic mirrors that liquify a salt solution in the central tower to then create steam and turn a generator for energy - I'd never seen one before! It's hard to tell in the photo, but does anyone know if there is one out there?
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