Long day to Sacramento

Yesterday was a little bit of hard driving, getting through all the mountain passes (at break-neck speed, with big trucks breathing down our bumper), but finally emerging victorious into the big Central Valley of California.

Mt. Shasta and the other mountain above (Mt. Brady?) are obviously volcanic cones.

Look at a topo map, and you can see that the Central Valley was all once a gigantic inland sea--view it from the ground, and it seems so vast as to be incomprehensible, to have once been filled with ocean from the Coastal Ranges to the Sierra Nevadas.

I know all this stuff, because I grew up and went to school in California (and I paid attention, too!)

Today, we are taking care of a few details--the cruise control on the Focus quit working (we're hoping it's a blown fuse), we need to get the tires rotated, and we need to return the chains we bought in Oregon and didn't use. Big hooray for that! Tonight, we will take Ray & Elaine out to dinner, and then get on the road to Los Angeles, where we will spend a couple of days with Mom.

Happy Trails to us all.