California Here I Am

Last night we had some technical difficulties with the internet that we solved this morning. So here's a recap of yesterday's adventures.

We (sadly) left Sedona after another gourmet breakfast at our altogether-out-of-Sedona Sedona hotel. I think Bonnie was ready to return to the crystal store for some more goodies (and I, of course, would have found some things I couldn't possibly live without as well) but that was in the other direction and would have meant facing nasty traffic delays.

So off we went. The landscape between Sedona and Phoenix began shifting from rocky mountains to rolling hills.

Desert surfaces became more prominent and the road and terrain flattened and heated up. After nearly three weeks of lush forests, inviting waterways, and spectacular canyons and mountains, it seemed like a pretty colorless landscape -- not just in terms of having little color but also in terms of having little colorful terrain.

In fact, our big excitement as we crossed Arizona and headed for just as colorless California along I-10 was the huge black cloud of smoke we saw off in the distance, which turned out to be a truck on fire. These are the shots that Bonnie caught at 75 mph.

One thing you will learn traveling as my co-pilot is how to shoot with the iPhone at highway speeds (or in excess thereof!). Go Bonnie!

Truly, there's little or nothing to say about most of the drive. It looks like this most of the time.

Occasionally it looks like this.

Or sometimes it looks like this.

You get the idea.

We stopped for lunch in Quartzsite, one of the last towns in Arizona. It featured an adobe ruin, more RV and trailer parks per square inch than anywhere else I've seen, and a temperature of 112 degrees. We had decent tuna melts with no flies at the Mountain Quail (or was it Quail Mountain) cafe. Neither of us can quite figure out how it got such high reviews on Urban Spoon. Makes me wonder about the whole methodology and whether the owners just bought a round for all the locals and had them put rave reviews on the site.

Back our in the sweltering heat, we hit the road once again. The temperature outside danced between 114 and 115. Visually it was more of the same so we got more creative in our photography.

This is my lovely "no headache" visor that I picked up in Sedona. With the top down, the sun can be so bright that it hurts my eyes. Driving here, the sun was so bright with the top up that the visor really helped.

As we passed Palm Springs, we came upon a huge -- by which I mean it seemed to go on forever -- wind farm. Here are a couple of snaps that try to convey it.

They line either side of I-10 and dance around in a mesmerizing, dizzying lack of uniformity. They're captivating and nauseating at the same time. I can't say it's terribly attractive but it's definitely compelling.

Then we turned off and headed to Hemet, to stay with Bonnie's mom Lorna and her husband Ed. Talk about an oasis in the desert!

This photo just gives you a small idea of how beautiful their home is. And the attractiveness of their home is nothing compared with what gracious and comforting hosts they are. Lorna plied us with incredible veal meatballs that were the lightest, most flavorful I've ever eaten. Ed and I got to watch the end of the Patriots rout of Atlanta. And we all enjoyed wonderful wine and a lot of laughs.

Today we're off to Carlsbad. That's all I know. Oh, and I'm about to sample real Canadian bacon, known as peameal bacon. It's rolled in cornmeal but used to be rolled in crushed yellow peas -- thus the name. Bon appetit!