Spring – California – Daily Photo

I drove down to the LA Times Travel show a week ago and because I had some time I drove highway 101 near the coast instead of the faster highway 5 through the central valley. This is the time of year when California has been drenched in rain for a couple of months and the hills are an amazing shade of green. In the Summer it doesn’t rain in this part of California (my home town got .1 inch one July and broke all records for rain). So these hills will turn brown (or golden as we like to say out here) by June. In Summer the only thing that will be green on these hills are these hardy live oak trees which hardly look green at all this time of year.

When I went to school in upstate New York over Christmas vacation I would leave the gray landscape that is Troy New York in winter, fly to California, and wake up in the morning to this lush green landscape. It was a bit of a shock. Of course went I went to school in August I would have the reverse shock of leaving a brown monochrome landscape and arriving in verdant New York. These hills won’t stay this color, so for now, we will enjoy them.

These pictures were taken just north of Camp Roberts.

Yes, I guess it is technically winter here, but seriously it is easier to call this spring.