I’ve just been traveling by car through the top half of California for the last two weeks and have seen enough beautiful interesting places to talk about for weeks to come. But given that we are in election time, I feel the need to speechify against the nabobs of negativism that seem to have gained the rhetorical upper hand.
What a great place we have! I haven’t done the carbon footprint math yet, but I have to say the USA has great roads. Maybe we don’t always appreciate how you can get from here to there, mostly on cruise control, but it keeps us tied together in ways the internet can never do. And wherever I went, there were road construction projects financed by — Stimulus Money, that’s what. Just look for the ARRA sign, indicating the funding and realize the a whole lot of people are working on the one thing we Americans really depend on, giving our vehicles a smooth ride.
Yosemite was the first place on our itinerary, and because the weather was rainy and cold for the first few days, I had more reason than usual to use all the amenities of this great National Park. There are a lot of people employed in that park, gladly warning you of bear hazards, and patiently entertaining all manner of anxious questions about the weather, road closures, bus routes and camping reservations. Although when we came back the fifth time to the wilderness permit office to return the bear cannister we has thought we needed but then realized we wouldn’t need, the ranger banned us from returning for at least a day. If this is government excess, then we are all a lot better off for it. And by the way, Yosemite is beautiful and spectacular, even in the rain and more so in the brilliant sun that finally appeared.
Next we went to San Fransisco, where every block seems to have ten restaurants and tourists from all over the world were spending freely. We happened to tour Alcatraz Island on Columbus Day and were nonplussed by how the welcoming presentation glossed over the Indian occupation of the island in 1969 and 1970 as a necessary prerequisite for the better economic opportunities now offered to Native Americans through casinos. However, the audio tour of the island, actually paints a fair picture of the misery of the prison, or at least as much as the average person can stand to hear about. It is one of the many chapters of our history that we have belatedly started to come to terms with. Overhearing comments of several visitors talking about the hard time they had done elsewhere and how Alcatraz compared, I thought how education is valuable in so many different ways.
The next day we went to Golden Gate park, to visit the serene Japanese Tea Garden and the impressive de Young museum. Although admission prices everywhere started to add up, I accepted this as part the American “you get what you pay for” mentality. We were kinda ripped off by one cab ride but entranced by another, who gave us a short history of the city from 1968 to the present day as he experienced it, and then said we were his last fare of the day (at one in the afternoon) and he was going home for a beer. Isn’t this the way travel is supposed to be? Disappointment around one corner sets up amazement for the next turn of the road.
There are more places to tell about, but the real story of this trip for me is that despite the impression you get from the media, every part of this country has its own unique geography and history. The fact that this is true proves that we are doing something very right. I was also very glad to see that Robert’s “smart phone” didn’t work very many places, and for the most part we were at the mercy of the place we were at. Which always turned out better than we expected.
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