Last weekend, Howard Dunaier and I drove down to the Carrizo Plain to see the wildflowers – they were stunning – but, really, it was just a trip to get outside. I am a In Wildness Is  the Preservation of the World guy and the trick is just to get out. As somebody once said, To go to the blank places on the map.

And the Carrizo Plain is one of those places. It is a place that very few of us Californians have heard of, but we have all seen pictures of it in articles on the San Andreas Fault. (A big deal here in California.) The Plain is a flat area at an elevation of about 2200 feet in the middle of the Coast Range roughly between San Luis Obispo on the coast and Bakersfield in the Central Valley. The San Andreas Fault run through the Carrizo Plain like a zipper up the back of a dress. (Double click for full picture.)   

We went south on Highway 101 to Highway 58 where we turned left to drive through the Coast Range. I had never been on Highway 58 before and was charmed by its curves. Highway 152 over Pacheco pass used to be my favorite road through the Coast Range, but no more.There is no real pass to speak of on 58, but the road is nice and curvy and very scenic!

With – on this day – lots of people stopping to take pictures of wildflowers.

Including us.

After about 50 miles and 50 stops, we were on the Carrizo Plain. A very big empty spot.

We had spent most of the day driving down 101 (I am not ready to say the 101, yet) and then taking pictures on 58, so it was pretty late by the time we got to the Carrizo Plain. It was starting to get cold, windy, and dark, so we fired up the barbecue and got on with making camp. It got colder and I was not really prepared for it. I was prepared for cool, not cold.

The weather forecast had been for the low 70s during the day and the high 40s at night. I sort of thought it just felt cold because it was windy and not as dry as, say, the Mojave, but the next day we found out that it had dropped down to 27F. But I already knew it was cold when, waking up in the middle of the night, there was a nice, thick, layer of frost on the bag.

The next day was still cold and still windy but very photogenic which I will write about tomorrow.

It is hard to believe a computer program could do this. Check it out. (If you really don’t have any time, start at 3:00.)

My Google Homepage referenced Fox and the New York Times on a story.

From Fox Nine suspects tied to a militia in the Midwest are charged with
conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral in the hopes
of killing more law enforcement people, federal prosecutors said Monday.

In the entire ten paragraph story, Fox names the group - Hutaree, in paragraph two – and says that they are an extremist group.

From the NYT  Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been
indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged
plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an
anti-government uprising.

As I started to read the story in the NYT, I wondered how they knew it was a Christian organization. Then the article referenced their website as saying that they were Christian. If they self identify as Christians, I am willing to agree they should be identified as Christians. I began to wonder if I had overlooked it at Fox. So, I went back and, no reference to Christians in the Fox article.  

Did Fox not think it was important that the group is Christian? – I'll bet they would think it was important if the group were Muslim. – Did they think it was important but we shouldn't know? I have no idea, but the Fox reader and the NYT reader will walk away with different facts, and, probably, different opinions on what happened and why.

I'll stick with the New York Times.

This is supposed to be a good year for flowers in Southern California and, especially, on the Carrizo Plain
.