I am on Day 19 and I still haven’t left California. This mind-boggling state seems to go on forever, offering a dizzying array of wonders, in every direction. From Yosemite, I made my way back over to the Sonoma Coast. This stretch of shoreline is some of the most beautiful I have laid eyes on, and I have been to many of the world’s most renowned beaches. Sharing this awe was Willy, whom I’m pretty sure had never seen a moving, full-of-life body of water. On his first day, I took an untold amount of videos of Willy chasing seagulls and running from waves, which perhaps lent to my renewed appreciation of the coast.

We traveled, and drooled, over roads that hugged the coastline and offered photo-worthy vistas at each turn. The rock formations, the miles of uninhabited beach, the flowers, the dunes—all were worthy of a closer look. We also encountered some of the largest mussels I have ever seen and the only reason they were not harvested for a van meal later were the warning signs promising me, at best, vomiting and, at worst, seizures. I had seen enough vomiting.

 

 

From Sonoma, we traveled up to the northernmost reaches of California to the Redwoods, and that’s when things really got big. Neither photos nor words could ever convey the magnitude of these trees. As a Tolkien fan, I imagined every one to be an Ent, each with its own 2,000-year-old story to tell. Or, perhaps there were dragon nests up high, out of sight. Dr. Suess would have imagined entire worlds inside of them and he would not have been wrong. In other words, these trees were otherworldly and held so much history and possibility.

So I have decided that Texas needs to abdicate its claim. The ginormity of California is nothing to ignore, even though most Californians have no idea what lies in their back 40. What I won’t miss are the equally large costs of everything in California.