Drove to Santa Barbara on Sunday

What was amazing about this drive is I hadn't done it before the flooding in January. So, many things had changed since I drove down Highway 101 the last time to Santa Barbara. The biggest things that stood out to me is near King City I realized that all the trees in the river had been either knocked down or all the leaves and most of the branches were gone because of the flooding. Also, the river at King City as you cross that bridge just before you reach the city stayed intact but the river wash is much wider like maybe several blocks wide from where it was. There is now (after the floods) basically a many homeless encampments wherever people could build high enough above the water that is still flowing down the Salinas River. I also noticed that as I began to get to Paso Robles that places like San Miguel that the oaks and other trees that grown near rivers had lost many of their branches and all of their leaves from the flooding too. 

Next, it was more green likely than any time I have seen it since the 1990s basically. In other words this flooding rain wiped out the drought (at least for now). And we are supposed to get more rain in California through out the state during the next few weeks too. But, it's not supposed to be atmospheric rivers which flooded everyone out that got flooded out between late December throughout most of January 2023 this year.

Beautiful drive down but I started to notice a haze around San Luis Obispo and I wondered whether it was from a fire or it was just smog that had built up around Los Angeles and drifted north or what. It also could just be people too poor to pay for electric or gas heating and gathering driftwood from the Salinas River and burning that to stay warm a lot too. It's hard to say for sure but I didn't see any fires to create the haze that were out of control. I wouldn't think after all the wet that a good fire could get going enough for the fire departments not to be able to put it out quickly under these conditions anyway.

Beautiful green hills a lot of the way to make you think almost some places you were in a really rainy place like England or Scotland or something as you drove along and many weeds growing up in the median like Wild Mustard up to 3 to 4 feet high which you don't get unless there has been a lot of consistent rain either here in California. So, Amazing drive south in many ways to Santa Barbara this time.