Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Lodi, California

When we arrived at the Stockton/Lodi RV Park, I posted a note on Facebook to that effect, and one of my friends sent me this. I had forgotten the song, but at the same time, I had never thought of Lodi as someplace I'd go on purpose. Now I know why.

We are actually five miles from the I-5, which is the route we are following, and a mile from Hwy.99. I'm not sure where Lodi is, exactly, but I don't think we're in it! We were aiming for something near Sacramento, but when we found ourselves in the middle of rush hour traffic (when will we learn?), and we saw the "Camping" sign at the Stockton exit, we took the hint. If we had known that the park was five miles down the road, we might have kept going, but I'm glad we came in. It is quiet here, and we are both tired.

Driving up the highway today, I noticed that the hills to the west of us (foothills of the Coast Range) looked almost as if they had been fashioned from Plaster of Paris and painted with tempera. The sky, on the other hand, had a decidedly watercolour look. A mixed media view of California, it was. There were trees in blossom on much of the route. I say they were almond trees. Robin disagrees, but he isn't sure what they really are. Almonds.

I have another Found Poem up. I found it in a blog written by Timothy Green - he to whom I submit found poems. I didn't realize it was Tim's blog I was mining until I'd been working on the poem for a while. When I noticed what I was doing, I stopped. I sent the poem to Tim with a note saying 'for your amusement'. A couple of days went by, and I didn't hear from Tim, who is usually responds very promptly. Uh-oh, I thought. I've offended him. No, he just hadn't gone into that particular e-mail account for a couple of days, and he wanted to go ahead and publish the poem. Cool.

The rest stops on the I-5 seem to be about sixty miles apart, which works out perfectly for our routine. (We drive one-hour shifts.) I have been listening to the Isabel Allende audio book, Portrait in Sepia, that I bought a day or two ago, so my shifts have been whizzing by. When I'm not listening to the book, I'm thinking about the fact that I really did register for NaNoWriMo, and now I have to get busy and think up characters and a plot and locations and oh, boy, what have I done? I may not sleep until next December.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Saw your poem up at Found Poetry-- good job. Lodi is a truly odd place; the nice thing for you is you're not there when it's really hot.

Debbie said...

I just loved your description of the hills and the sky.

Sandra Leigh said...

Thanks, John. Really hot? Hardly. I had to stumble out of bed in the middle of the night to turn the furnace on. I'm having fantasies of that horribly hot Yucatan.

And thank you, Debbie. Once in a while it's as if I've fallen into a movie set, and yesterday's hills were like that.

Anonymous said...

Love sharing your travels!! I bet they are almond trees! : D

Sandra Leigh said...

Kim- thanks for the reminder. I've looked up "California almond tree" on Google, and I came up with this link:
http://www.pcimagenetwork.com/blossom/p8.jpg

I wuz right. Heh.

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