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Published: March 28th 2022
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We spent a thankfully uneventful night in Santa Nella, and awoke to much cooler temperatures, and some hazy sunlight. I went for a run, hoping to take a quiet road along a canal, but turned around after I came to a second "Breaking Bad" type trailer. I instead ran through the RV park and single wide home area nearby. Everyone seemed to have guard dogs, but all were fenced, until I came around a corner and a large white husky mix stared me down from the middle of the street. I always carry dog biscuits, so offered the dog one. He wouldn't approach too closely so I put it on the ground. He delicately picked it up and trotted home, to my relief!
Once back to the hotel, I took a swim in the pool, which I had all to myself. We packed up, and drove to a nearby charging station, located behind the dumpsters at an Anderson's Pea Soup restaurant. We got an omelet to go, and ate in the sun while waiting for the charge to finish.
I drove the first half of the day, through hours of dry ranch land interspersed with occasional orchards, on Interstate
5. We changed drivers at the charging station at Buttonwillow (nothing cute about this stop except the name) and continued on through Los Angeles to Seal Beach. I love the ascent up to Tejon Pass and never get tired of the changing flowers and colors. "Historians speak of the area around Gorman, California (just south of the crest of the Tejon Pass), as "one of the oldest continuously used roadside rest stops in California." This is because
pre-Columbian indigenous Californians "would have stopped there when it was the
Tataviam village of Kulshra'jek", a trading crossroads for hundreds to thousands of years."
The poppies were in full bloom on the tops of the hills to the east, with some peaks looking like they were on fire!
Going down the long descent, we arrived in Los Angeles, passing the Getty Museum and all the famous street names. Traffic wasn't too bad (we did see an RV with its brakes smoking heavily as it came down the pass..). We drove to the pier at Seal Beach, and I got to play in the surf for awhile. Bill lived here in the 70s just a few blocks from the beach, and his little
rental house is still there. We then went to the home of Bill's friend Char, who still lives in Seal Beach and is still teaching full time at the age of 75! Bill and Char reminished about Char's husband Van, who sadly died of Covid in 2020. We had a delicious dinner cooked by Jose, a family friend for years, and delightful conversation with Jose, Leonora and Char. Dinner did get interrupted for a bit by the drama around the Oscars...
Tomorrow we head for Yuma, after a quick visit with another former Seal Beach friend of Bill's.
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