#3 SCOOTER SUBLIME'S TRAVEL JOURNAL

CALIFORNIA CENTRAL VALLEY

Friday, August 24, 2023 -

 Have you ever smelled California’s Central Valley? Oh my! It is glorious. Crops, orchards, wildlife, and wetlands. Imagine having a nose like mine, hundreds of times more sensitive to odor than that of any animal that can read.

Imagine a plate piled with rice, almonds, walnuts, plums, peaches, tomatoes, wheat, olives, corn alfalfa, pears, figs, sunflowers, grapes, kiwifruit all resting on a bed of freshly mown hay. Every bit of what you see there was grown in the Sacramento Valley, which probably you know, is the upper part of California’s Central Valley, through which we passed on our way to the home of friends who live where there are as many cars, bumper to bumper, and moving at a Central Valley snail’s pace, as there are almonds loaded on that imagined plate.

My friend, Susan, would call what I just said, a “run-on” sentence. But you need to understand what it’s like for a Washingtonian pup to experience all this.

 Abundance from the land. Beauty of lakes and rivers and mountains. And trucks. Dear Murgatroyd! Millions of trucks on the roads through Central Valley.

CALIFORNIA CENTRAL VALLEY

 Did you know that California’s Central Valley has one of the nation’s worst smog problems? We thought maybe it was smoke from fires that we saw as we traveled from the Sacramento Valley into the San Joaquin Valley. But no, that was smog. Dad closed my window.

 And this—get this—the floor of Central Valley is sinking. What should we expect when the aquifers are being drained for irrigation and drinking water. Apparently, there’s no stopping it, even if it rains and rains. But we need the food. And the drinking water. What about swimming pools and golf courses? People have things to think about while I enjoy odors new to my nose.

I have a theory about the sinking. My mom found a study stating that 5,839 “heavy-truck trips per day” traverse the Central Coast of California. Look, the average big rig weighs 20 to 30 times more than an average passenger car. You can do the math. Personally? I think the valley is sinking under the weight of transport.

 Just one more thing. It’s Friday. We are safely in the home of friends for a few days stay, and I’m nearly ready for an early morning walk. This:

 I’m glad I didn’t know yesterday, on my birthday; the day my head was hanging out my passenger window. A recent study states that Interstate 5 is “the most dangerous road in the United States. And, just great ! “Some of the most dangerous corridors along the 5 run through Kern County, San Joaquin County, and Sacramento County. You know, along that straight, flat road we spent hours traversing. Now they tell me!