Love Hate with California

I first came to California at the end of military career, leaving Travis AFB in the rearview mirror. Not a feeling of the last time I’d come but more a feeling I would never live there again. I love California and its diversity in nature and people. If you ever wanted to witness different nationalities living not in their homeland, come to California. If you’re one of the stupid people, particularly those leading our country, I’m quite sure you’d feel very uncomfortable there. What I mean is those idiots that think the country should all be white somehow equating that to the old days, I’d have you read a little history. Not the history made up to believe in their whiteness only and not any sense of reality. I love the diversity and find it the melting pot of the country to see all sorts of backgrounds coming together to live and thrive and create the richest state in our country. The GDP of California makes up a huge part of the national GDP with Texas being the next closest. Both states leading most countries in the world including Russia. I absolutely love the natural environment in California which also diversity describes the best. From our biggest desert in the nation to beautiful mountains and the largest coastline in our nation on an ocean. But there is a hate relationship with it too. I get anxiety over the population and traffic. It feels like you’re driving in a NASCAR event every time you enter a ramp onto the interstate. I don’t care which interstate; the experience exists on them all.

  Years ago, even though I thought I would never own property in California again, we were looking for another timeshare that carried weight for trading but also for going to and enjoying. I didn’t hesitate and suggested Lake Tahoe and we bought a timeshare within two weeks. We have two of them now and we bought both when you could still buy a full week as ownership and pay property taxes properly on an actual location and not some made up property tax on points. Hawaii was our first timeshare, and I suppose most people would think we would always want to go to Hawaii.  Not true, I actually go through withdrawals when we don’t use our Tahoe time. It is the most beautiful lake in the country to see has you come over the top of the mountain and see it, especially if its your first time. We hike on an endless amount of trails scaling from novice to expert and insane. We’ve encountered wildlife of numerous kinds, most notably a sow bear and her two cubs as we were crossing a walking bridge that the mama bear decided was a better avenue to cross the stream just like us. I don’t think my heart has pumped bigger as I stood my ground as tall as possible yelling and screaming. She looked at me as if I should check myself into the mental ward at Bellevue and graciously backed away after what seemed an eternity and allowed us to pass. The only bear encountered that got my heart beating was in Colorado camping in the backcountry with my German Shepherd and a friend. It was also a sow and cub experience, but this time was a rather large cub eating our trash from the can on the trail with mama finally calling out for him. All of scattered like flies on a hamburger at a picnic when someone brings out the swatter. Back to California, I absolutely love the cactus in southern California, making Jen laugh at my comment on cactus forests. But the number one thing we hold in very high regard and miss more than anything is Napa and Sonoma wine country. We have enjoyed other wine viticulture regions across the country and numerous others in California, but nothing holds a candle to Napa and Sonoma. Hard to describe the feeling and the closest is to say that when are there, we feel like being at home. We don’t want to leave, but we also don’t have deep enough pockets to actually own a home or condo. The hated part is the cost of houses. There are few areas of the country that touch the prices, Hawaii or Jackson Wyoming might be on par, but for the scale of the state and the pricing being north to south and east to west, prices and taxes are astronomical. At least in Hawaii they have legacy pricing for native Hawaiians, but in California, they pretty much rape everyone equally with the costs of living. It causes great wonderment as to why the state

has such a hard time staying in the black economically with debt.

We have kicked ourselves for years not buying in Tahoe immediately after the housing market bust in 2009 and I’m sure we’ll kick ourselves for not buying in Black Bear Lake area as I’m sure the rental market will revert back to the old days before everyone was trying to get a piece of the pie for their ownership. But then again, I feel the same way about what we could have bought at the time in Hawaii and many other resort or vacation destination hotspots. We love California and we’ll keep coming until either we can’t or die, especially sense we have two of our kids living there. Who knows, maybe I’ll win on a big lottery ticket buy someday and be able to own with the rich people of the world or at least those in California.