California observations

The high-lights:
1. The weather is pretty perfect. Forty five degrees in morning and night, 60-70 during the day. Sunshine abound.
2. The flora is AmAzInG! I thought about loading up some interesting plants more than once.
3. There's always plenty to do in and around Orange County. We spent the day at Irvine Park (train ride, farm animals, zoo, lakes, trails).

The low-lights:
1. The 300 mile stretch of I-5 from Sacramento to Santa Ana was torturous...flat farm land as far as the eye can see. No cities or change of scenery.
2. Crazy drivers! These people will do anything to get ONE car length ahead, no matter smooth sailing or bumper to bumper.
3. A "kid's milk" at one restaurant cost $3.25.
4. A woman in Trader Joe's yelled "watch out!" to Charlie when he accidentally backed into her cart. Charle reported that she scared him.
5. I conducted a study on friendliness today during my beautiful run in Peter's Canyon. I came across about 40 other exercisers. I said "Good Morning", smiled and made eye contact with all of them. One person said good morning first. Five gave a friendly response (smile and wave or g.m.). Ten looked up at me (smile?). The other 30ish didn't respond in any way...I'm not in Idaho.

Interesting facts:
1. The rest stops are packed! When we finally made it off the ramp, we searched for parking for 10 minutes. There were at least 80 cars/RVs. People were playing modified volleyball. Families were having picnics. The actual bathroom was speckled with diversity where a smattering of world languages were spoken, including Indian, Russian, Spanish, Chinese. The diversity was a plus, but the actual rest stop experience was hellish.
2. Everyone drives shiny, clean, new cars. We counted a only couple "beaters."
3. A drive thru car wash can cost upward on $60-whoa-de-doh! We managed to get our money's worth using the unadvertised cheap option of $12 (our car was pretty dirty). Most of the work is done by hand, as there are numerous people standing about w/ brushes & towels.
4. The sunglasses are huge! Obviously out of necessity given the sun, but the style is typically large-framed with some sort of gold or diamelle decor on the frames.