On the way to Urumchi… ;)

I’m here, woohoo! I’m sitting in the hostel near Bowers Museum, happily nibbling on my beef stew and playing with the hostel’s wifi. This is so incredibl cool! I love tech. ;)

The hostel is incredibly nice — this is my first time in one, and I’m quite impressed. I’m sitting in the living room, and there’s an attractive porch outside I could sit at instead if I wished. The kitchen seems to have been designed for people no taller than about 5′, but past that it’s clean and well stocked. I’m very much enjoying myself so far.

The drive was very nicely uneventful, coming in at almost exactly 6 hours. The terrain I drove through was, on the whole, either a lovely gold of shorn hay and dying grass on the wrinkled hillsides, or shaggy green. There was a lot of that, and it was a very relaxing drive down 5, bracketed on both sides by orchards, vineayards, or fields of other crops. I live at sea level, so it was noticeable to me when I got up to over 4000′ as I crossed the Tejon Pass into the LA valley. The hills are gorgeous: rumpled and wrinkled like an old bed with the sheets cast casually aside. In places they’re scraggly with patches of undergrowth, like a scruffy mutt that’s not been properly shorn, and in others they’re covered with a thick green fuzz of trees.

Sunset was beautiful, with the hills in front of me covered with what looked like a lavender and soft gray shawl of twilight and distant rain, while behind me the soft gray-white clouds covered the sun but poured out molten gold through a tear in the bottom of their shroud.

Getting late here. More tomorrow! :)