Well, this was not at all what I expected northern California to be like. It's remote and open and very, very rocky. It is not Malibu Beach. Chico, the region's hippest town due to the college, is a vibrant and progressive city, filled with your hippies, hippie want-to-bes and left over hippies from the 60's. But it also has a nice sort of business feel - clean and peaceful. It seems to be the hub for the many smaller towns surrounding it, and rightfully so.
Paradise, on the other hand, could not be more different. It sits up about 1300 feet above Chico on this plateau and all the houses and streets are built on rolling hills and cliffs. It's like living in a dense - very dense - extremely dense Sherwood Forest. I kept expecting to see Robin Hood around every tree. Driving on Skyway Drive from Paradise back to Chico is treacherous. The drop off to the canyon below is a mile down and scary. The view is spectacular for those who are not height-challenged, but that does not include the driver in this family. "Look at the road. Look straight ahead." I kept repeating that while we drove on this really narrow road on the top of this ridge that seemed like it was on the top of the world. Aaah! Give me the flat land any day! The thing I kept thinking about it how do these people drive these roads in the winter? And then I remembered, there really IS no winter here. At least, not like we experience it in South Dakota. It never snows here, just rains. Oh, I guess they might get a dusting of the white stuff in Paradise, but it's not ever cold enough to stay put. And although it was sort of a nice place, it doesn't own up to its name. Sorry, we'll all have to wait for heaven to really find that. :)
The other thing that is strange are the fields of rice! Like grassy lakes, they are everywhere. Never seen that before. Wild.
They don't have goat heads here (nasty hard prickly thorn-like things found in Washington) but they do have star thistle, and those are just as bad. Plants with nice little yellow flowers that look so harmless, until you get near them and as soon as you do - you know. Covered with long spiky thorns, they are just plain mean. And we also found the little seeds that started the whole Velcro phenomena. We found them after a short walk through a field and came out covered in them. Shoe laces, socks, shorts and skirts - covered. And when you brush them off - the prickles stick into your skin. Can you say OUCH!?! And there are these wild daisy flowers that are covered in sap. Deceitful little buggers. And the pine cones! We found some as big as a football! Strange. So strange.
What struck us is how different it is here than Nevada. As soon as you cross over the border, it's like landing on another planet. If I were Nevada, I'd be a little ticked off. It's like they picked the border of Utah and California just exactly so - so that those two states got the good land and what was ever left in between was left for Nevada. Sorry to dis the state so, but it's just not my cup of tea. Seems not to be many others cup either, due to the extreme lack of inhabitants. But that's another story.
Have you ever been to a restaurant where after you order, and pay and began to eat, they come around and ask you if you want more and more and more - of anything? Well, we went to this little teeny Mediterranean place and the owner suggested the sampler platter. So we get that and he kept bringing more pitas over, more sauce, more falafels, more dolmas, and rice - which we didn't even come with the meal, he just brought it over for us to try. It was like the old Greek aunt wanting to keep us eating all night long, by shoving plates of food in front of us saying "Eat! Eat!" till we burst. I think I almost did. Boy was that good food. The Samosas were excellent. Well, everything was. I will pay for this in the morning . . .
To bed. 7 am will come early. We plan to be on our way back east tomorrow, God willing.
Can't believe it's the middle of September. This little vacation has flown by. They usually do I guess. Back home and back to the grind stone. And the cold. And the snow. And the nine months of cloudy days. (aahhh!) I guess I'll just have to dream of sunny California! :)
jill and all
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