California Road Trip

This week my family is going on a good old-fashioned road trip to Monterey, California. We left the island on Wednesday, and today headed from Portland down into north central California. I always seem to forget how beautiful southern Oregon is, as the drive on I5 south of Eugene really is pleasant with great rural views and beautiful green rolling hills. Here's a view out of the car window as we drove through the Siskiyou Mountains:

Just across the California border we got a great view of Mt. Shasta:

The highway then goes right by one of Mt. Shasta's satellite cones, Black Butte, which was still snow-covered despite the warm sunshine.

There were even some good wildlife sightings on the drive. I saw my first-ever skunk (well, live one anyway....), which was exciting. My dad and I also get a kick out of testing ourselves to see how many birds we can identify going 50+ mph. Today featured a pretty decent list:

Canada goose
Great blue heron
Egret sp.
Turkey vulture
Bald eagle
Red-tailed hawk
Northern harrier
Ring-billed gull
Rock dove
Mourning dove
Magpie sp.
American crow
Common raven
American robin
European starling
Red-winged blackbird
Brewer's blackbird
Western meadowlark

We enjoyed seeing the ring-billed gulls at a rest area in Weed, California - it's been a while since I've seen one and they looked strikingly different compared to all the glaucous-winged gulls I've been seeing. In their crisp, clean breeding plumage they really looked beautiful and very bright:

It's warm enough to walk outside tonight in a T-shirt, and I'm more than happy to trade the pine trees for palm trees for a few days. Hopefully the warmth and sunshine will continue for our whale-watching trip tomorrow out of Monterey.