This is a shot of one of the redwoods in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. Look at that tree, for crying out loud!   Last September, we spent a wonderful ten days in the Bay Area of California.   You know how people will say “Oh I’d love to visit, but I’d never want to live there,” when you tell them about your travels?  My mother is like that.  She was sure that the entire time we were in California, the ground would be shaking beneath our feet.  She would never dream of living somewhere like that.  But man, now that I’ve been there, I totally get it.

We stayed with friends that live about an hour outside San Fransisco and they kindly toured us all over the place.  We saw the city, we went to Monterey and Carmel, had an afternoon in Napa, and spent a couple days in Yosemite.  Can you imagine having all of that within a couple hours drive of home?  I’d be happy for one thing like that, near Philadelphia.  So, yeah, it’s pretty safe where I live.  We don’t get devastating floods or forest fires, tornadoes or earthquakes.  We might lose power during a snowstorm in the winter but that’s usually just inconvenient.  But the closest coast line is the Jersey Shore and the highest mountains on the East Coast are only around 6,000 feet so…well, meh.  So I get it, Californians, I get it.