Leaving

After Death Valley, we needed to get back to San Francisco. Unfortunately the Sequioa National Park is in the way. My initial idea was to head north and into Yosemite, but we didn't have the time, so instead it was down, spend the night in Tehachapi, then a long drive the following day up to San Fran.

I'd never driven through that area of California before. Seeing all the agriculture was interesting, but also kind of frighting. Just about everyone is growing the same thing. There is very little variety and from the boards that were up in a lot of places, they're feeling pressure. Apparently complaints about water entitlements.

I'll just get a little political here. I live in Australia, one of the driest places on the planet, I find people complaining about water entitlements sort of interesting, because they're usually people saying: "We use to get xxxL of water and now we only get yyL, give us back our (xxx-yy) water!" That would be fine except a)Climate change (yes, it exists, get over it) means that a lot of places simply aren't getting the rainfall and hence the water they use to and b) There are a lot more people which means more water is needed.

On that subject, I found water conservation in the US is not good. Dual flush toilets for example, never saw any, questionable irrigation tactics, lots of very wasteful water use. It's quite simple, water is not a finite resource and needs to be better managed, this will mean that some industries will not be viable in their current locations, which will suck if you rely on one of those industries.

Ok, rant over now.

We drove up through California. A brief stop to oogle at a data centre. Another stop to oogle at a Bass Pro fishing shop (it was huge) and then I got abandoned at the San Francisco Airport. Fourteen hours or so later I was in Sydney, then another five hours after that, back in Perth. It was a lot of time on a plane, but a rather fun trip. I need to go back and catch up on the bits I missed, but that will have to wait until next time.