I meant to post these photos sooner, but after New Years rolled through and I returned to work, I ended up being too busy to set some time aside to go through these photos until tonight.
Like I said in my previous post, my mom drove us home from Solvang, so I was able to enjoy the view and have a bit of fun taking photos through the moving vehicle.
It was really hard to hold the camera still in the car while my mom drove, especially every time she turned to follow the road between the hills. Virtually no photo was taken with proper intent; I could never be sure what I was about to capture when I hit the shutter.
At first I was a bit frustrated when the car would wobble the moment I prepared for a shot, but I decided to make a game out of it. It was much more fun to point my camera toward the passenger window and try to time when interesting things would pass by while we drove through.
Most of the time, I missed the shot I wanted lol. But I got a few really nice ones in the end, and each time I manage to catch what I wanted, it was exhilarating.
I missed so many similar ranch signs before I caught this one in time to the speed of us passing through. The freeway we took cut through a lot of mountains and farmland, and it was a much more interesting view than the drive I normally take when I travel to and from my mom’s for the holidays.
The view of flat grasslands with mountains in the distance offered a sort of romantic view of this desolate land squashed between towns. I saw many herds of cows, but only caught a couple of clear shots of them that are worth showing.
After we drove through the mountains, we passed through Maricopa (where all those oil wells were, when we left for Solvang the other way, in part I) again on the way home.
This is not what people think of when you say California, but these small, forgotten pockets of the state do make up a good chuck of the state geographically. I grew up surrounded by small towns like this. There’s sort of a beauty to it, not glamorous, but rough and real.
This was also late December in 2024, after what happened in November. I thought about that a lot as we drove through this area. This is likely “his” country. The people here as different from my world view as can be, and yet I felt emotional as I took the view in. Life was hard here.
By this point, it was nearing sunset, so the low sun made for an extra moody atmosphere. I kept thinking of The Grapes of Wraith while I looked on.
After we passed the oil fields, the road was much less interesting, and then we returned home. If I get another chance to be in the passenger seat on my next drive, I want to do this again (to try to capture the view of the drive).
I think I have about two posts in my backlog. Then I’ll be caught up again, until next time lol.
