Sunday,
April 26, 2015
We
are in New Bern, North Carolina, at my dad’s.
We said our final goodbyes to my mother yesterday. Three of her siblings were able to come with
their spouses, and her children and grandchildren were here. It was nice to be able to gather all
together.
We
left our trailer in San Jose at 6:30 in the morning last Thursday and arrived
at Dad’s about midnight. It was rather
interesting flying across the country from dawn to dusk. The clouds that had been gathering west of
the coastal range on Monday had crept over the hills during the night and
blanketed the valley. There hasn’t been
any rain lately so the hills are turning from green to gold. The drought is real.
We
flew first to LA, where the US Air terminal is a real mess. Then we headed east. I dozed and read and looked out the window,
watching the parched desert pass below.
I missed seeing the Grand Canyon, but caught part of the Painted Desert
landscape that reminded me of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. You can see the valleys carved by ancient and
not so ancient rivers. In the desert,
straight lines are roads, squiggly lines are streams. If there are trees, they line the streams and
the eastern slopes of hills. As we fly
further east, there are circles in the desert, evidence of irrigation, but they
still look dry and unplanted. The
farther east we go, I begin to see some of the circles are green and then more
and more green and fewer brown. Soon
there are no brown circles and then we have green fields that apparently need
no irrigation.
Then
the ground was obscured by a bank of clouds that extended as far as I could
see. I missed seeing the Mississippi,
but spotted some of the Tennessee Valley lakes as the daylight began to fade
and night approached. Lights came on and
the landscape twinkled with lights, much like the starry skies we’ve seen out
west.
It’s
been a busy weekend and we have a busy day to go before we head back to
California on Tuesday. But it will be
nice to get back to our travels.
Deb
