Short-lived Victory

Although I triumphed in the pool over my ears, I completely failed to get my certification.  I wrote a big long post about it, but decided not to post it because it was so maudlin.  Scuba kicked my ass, but I will keep trying.  Mike did great:  the young kids could not keep up with him.
We are currently on the road to Oregon, to take Tempest to her new home.  Sophie has already been placed with a family and it seems to be going well, according to our mutual friends.  Now it is Tempest's turn.  We are taking our time driving up there.  We left yesterday and drove north, avoiding LA and going through Sequoia National Monument and the national forest.  We stopped and spent the night in Visalia.  Today we drove through Yosemite - over the Tioga pass through the Tuolomne Meadows to Bridgeport, where we are spending the night.  Our hotel room is right on the Walker River, and there is a sliding glass door leading out to it. 

We passed a lot of different bodies of water today.  I always like that.  Living as long as I have in southern California which is basically an irrigated desert, there are few things so delightful as a natural body of moving water.  Anytime I see a sign for a creek, a river, a lake, or anything else, I am really excited when there is actual water in it.  Even a stockpond is interesting to me.  Today there were a lot of creeks just bubbling away over rocks and boulders, waterfalls, and some lakes that were made by glaciers and are on their way out.  I felt bad about that part, but it is a natural process according to Mike, so I am not going to argue.

When we were kids and first moved out here, we lived in Orange County and often drive up to Fresno to see our relatives.  When we got to the point in the trip when the California Aquaduct first came into view as it came out of the mountains, my mother would point to it and say "See that water, girls?  That's stolen water.  Los Angeles stole that water from those Owens Valley farmers at gunpoint."  And later I found out she was right.  The story of water and Los Angeles is really fascinating and scary at the same time.

Tomorrow we plan to skirt Lake Tahoe and continue to work our way north.  It is really fun not to have a schedule to keep to.  Mike does not want to go into Nevada (probably because of Sharon Angle).  So I have no idea what kind of time we will make.  This will likely be our last road trip for awhile.  The next trip will be via water!