February 18, 2017:
In compensation, the view over the Sierras is spectacular.
Perfect clear day, Indian summer, unclouded visibility clean from horizon to horizon. Brown world of wrinkles and folds, straight lighter-brown lines of roads, darker snaking curves of dry stream beds, occasional cluster of buildings, small backroad towns. It feels empty and Martian, where even the patterns of rare circular irrigated fields seem alien.
Better there than here.