I'm back home after 26 days on the road. I covered almost 10,000 miles, and passed through six Canadian provinces and 27 US states. I ate hoagies, grinders, and subs. Actually, I ate none of those. The closest thing I had was a sandwich at a Tim Horton's; I'm not sure what they call long sandwiches in Canada.
This is the first time I've come back to Washington at the end of a trip and not been happy to be home, which is remarkable considering how long the trip was and how eager I was for it to be over. I'm elated to be back with all my dogs (less elated about the workload over the next two or three days), but I want nothing more at the moment than to pack them all up and move them to California, where it's springtime now, not the dead of winter. Washington's been great, and I'd probably not be where I am in terms of my career if I hadn't been living here for the last five years, but that I can return to such a beautiful place and not be happy to be back tells me one thing - it's time to leave. A little history on this nagging itch:
I have a hard time staying in one place. Call it wanderlust, fear of commitment, an inability to ever be satisfied, or whatever you like, but the fact is, even though every time I move I complain that I never want to do it again, it's never long before I'm ready to get going. I moved into this building about two years ago, and I still haven't unpacked most of my stuff, so I guess I never fully intended on making this a long term arrangement, whether or not it was a conscious decision. What tempers my need to keep moving are the facts that my career necessitates a less nomadic lifestyle and that one of my main hobbies, landscaping and horticulture, works better when I stay in one place. If not for those two things, I'd probably be in a new place every few days.
When I first came to Washington, I felt I'd stay here at least until retirement, but it wasn't long before I was looking for a way out, first for financial reasons. When my money situation became more stable and I didn't have to leave, I was content to stay indefinitely, but a drive through California had me, for lack of a better way to put it, seeing elephants. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to anyone reading this, but I'll explain anyway.
Whenever I drive through a place for the second, third, or tenth time, I do so with a new pair of eyes, seeing things differently than I did on the previous occasions. Each trip through a familiar place is a bit like a visit to someplace brand new. So a few years ago, as I drove through California's central valley, I looked out at the golden, rolling hills and their oak-laden ravines, and it reminded me of videos I'd seen of Africa, particularly the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. At that time, I had begun expanding my vision of an animal sanctuary for large carnivores into one for many species; I thought that a California location might be good for a second facility, after the sanctuary in Washington had been established for a number of years and reached its full potential. I set the idea aside, planning to revisit it much, much later.
Then came the winter of 2007/2008, with hurricane force winds that ripped my building apart, nearly killing me in the process. Maybe that's too dramatic - the winds ripped apart 1,200 square feet of the building that had been added onto the original structure, carrying it over my head, across the road, and into the neighbors' yard, where it took out a large tree and a fence. I wasn't hurt, but if the flying metal and wood had hit me, I'd probably have been cut in half. Regardless, I wondered if Washington was the right place for an animal sanctuary, and I decided that if this winter brought high winds like the last one did, I'd be gone before the next one. Then came our current winter - no horrific winds, but it's been one of the coldest on record. I began to worry about my animals getting hypothermia, and kept my dogs inside quite a bit. My pond froze, and I couldn't leave the dogs in that section of the yard, for fear that they would fall through the ice. The snow was fun for awhile, as first snows of the year always are, but it wasn't long before I, and the dogs, were sick of it. It surprises people, but I've spent most of the winter wishing for rain.
I've been thinking a lot about California. Without revealing my entire, long-term vision, (which I've already done in a rather lengthy document for internal sanctuary use) much of California has traits, in terms of weather and location, that make it ideal. Proximity to cities with affluent populations, no snow, relatively mild summers; after scanning the coast with Google Earth, I had some ideas of where to look for property, and I tried to drive through as many of those potential areas as I could on this trip. So back to the trip:
I picked up small dogs in Huntington Beach and Thousand Oaks; I'll do a separate post about all six dogs from this trip, with pictures. I left southern California a few hours later than planned on Wednesday, and drove through Santa Barbara and up 101 to Greenfield to visit a friend, Jason. Jason told me that real estate in the area was pretty cheap, so I've been looking into it, and found small farms for under $7,000/acre. I'd prefer to be closer to the ocean, but I'm not likely to get everything I want out of the first place I buy. I stayed in King City overnight and continued up 101 the next morning.
Just before Salinas, a guy was tailgating me, so I tapped the brakes to get him to back off; I didn't slow down. The guy then passed me on the right, got ahead of me, and gave me the finger, which he did in a way suggesting that he really meant it - not just a casual f-you. I pulled alongside him, not because I was trying to catch up, but because he had slowed down; I looked over and motioned to him to ask, 'what's the problem, ' at which point his wife was leaning halfway across his lap, waving her arms and screaming at me. I don't know if she thought I could hear her, but I couldn't, because my windows were up, their windows were up, and we were driving on the highway. Duh. I kept driving, passed them, and I still have no idea what they were so angry about. But I'll say this - what a couple of a-holes. Which brings me to the one thing I probably dislike most about California: the drivers. Back east, people drive aggressively; they do it because if they don't, they'll never get anywhere. In California, people drive aggressively, too, but not because they need to; rather, they drive that way because they're selfish, self absorbed two-year-olds who don't care about anyone or anything outside of their own vehicles. They crowd into the left lane, all wanting to be the fastest car on the road, but end up just making it impossible for anyone to pass anyone else, and slowing down traffic. They pass on the right, which makes it impossible for a slow vehicle to move out of everyone else's way. They pass you, then slow down in front of you. They drive into your blind spot and stay there for miles. Because I drive a vehicle that's over twenty feet long, I've adopted a driving style for western highways that works particularly well in California, which is that I do pretty much whatever I want as far as lane changes go, but I do it slowly enough that everyone around me has time to react. So in Thousand Oaks, I was moving into the right lane, when I saw a little, sporty car flying up behind me, intending to pass me on the right before I got over. I kept moving over. He decided to pass me on the shoulder. Then when we got to the light at the top of the offramp, he wouldn't look at me. That's California drivers.
Moving on, I drove through San Jose and San Francisco, then crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, got onto PCH, and went to Point Reyes National Seashore. I'd been reading about Point Reyes, which has a large herd of Tule elk, the most endangered elk subspecies in North America. I went to all of the southern beaches, and did manage to see a herd of elk near Drake's Beach, which were smaller and lighter colored than our Roosevelt elk or the Rocky Mountain elk I see in Colorado and Wyoming. The rest of the park was mainly dairies, which seemed a little strange to me, but I guess the mission of that particular park is to preserve agricultural history as well as wildlife habitat. As an animal welfare advocate, I have to say I wasn't especially excited to see what looked like a veal operation at one of the dairies. It may not have been veal, but I can't imagine why else they were confined to such small quarters; they weren't in boxes with their legs broken, but their pens were only about six feet long.
Point Reyes is windy - too windy for me, after the trauma of last winter. It is, in fact, said to be the windiest point on the Pacific coast of North America, and I believe it. Trees struggle to grow there; sand drifts across roads; the ocean is as rough as it is up here, 700 miles north. A little farther up the coast, Bodega Bay is less windy, but despite being only 65 miles from San Francisco and 23 miles from Santa Rosa, it feels a world away - a tiny town of less than 1,000 people, that happens to have a large harbor and a world class golf course, recently renovated to the tune of $1.2 million. So not an especially cheap place to live, but probably the area in which I'd most like to live and build my sanctuary. Land is expensive if you buy a small piece, but the price per acre goes down considerably, the larger a parcel you buy; I guess that's true in most places. So maybe someday... It's hard to put my finger on what I like so much about the area, but I think it's that it has most of the things I like about southern California and western Washington, without most of the things I don't like, plus a few elements of the Dakota Badlands and the Nicaraguan jungle. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get back; I'd like to go again in the summer and see what it's like in terms of weather, tourist traffic, etc.
From Bodega Bay, I headed back to 101 and stayed the night in Santa Rosa; I like that city, although I haven't been there many times. I've never entered from the coast before, but I was surprised to find myself in a familiar area and I knew right where the hotel was. I continued up the coast the next day, driving through the redwood forests; I like the redwoods, and would consider living there as well as farther south, the drawback being the longer distance to San Francisco. Besides, even though Humboldt and Del Norte Counties are the best known places for redwood trees, they occur naturally as far south as Big Sur. I stopped in Eureka for some Carl's Jr.; the Kentucky Bourbon Burger is gross - stick to the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I went to Orick, where I always stop to buy redwood and sequoia seedlings, and where I will someday buy some amazing redwood and buckeye burl furniture. From there, it was on to Crescent City, where I took 199 to Grant's Pass, Oregon.
Grant's Pass can go to hell. Someone actually tried to spit on one of my dogs while driving past, and I had the sense that he was one of the more friendly, polite people in that town.
I spent the night and drove home the next day. I found all of the dogs looking good, most of them a bit fat, except for Ruby, who had lost weight and appeared not to be eating much while I was gone. Next time I go away I'll board her at the vet's office. A few of the dogs seemed not to recognize me right away, while others were overjoyed to see me. Spencer, who's been riding with me all this time, acted like he didn't know any of them; he's been pretty nasty with all of the dogs that we left behind, but I think he'll settle down after a few days.
It's weird being home after so long on the road; it almost feels like none of it ever happened. One thing I will never forget about this trip, though, is all of the displaced people I saw, leaving one place to find work in another. It really reminded me of the stories I used to read about the Great Depression, people fleeing the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck novels. If you haven't seen the impact of our economic situation, and you're wondering if it's really as bad as everyone's saying it is, hit the road for a few weeks. People are in trouble and desperate; it's a scary time.
Pictures:
 Coming into San Francisco |  North Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore |  North Beach |  North Beach, looking the other way |
 Tule elk |  Tule elk |  Redwoods |
