California, here we come

Wednesday, I spent about eight hours in a car with my mother, my father, both my brothers, and the Boy.  We drove from the Mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon on down to just south of Eureka, California.  I’ve learned a number of things on this trip so far.  I thought I might share some of them with you.

• The Boy doesn’t yet get gum, so taffy such as laffy taffy or airheads are a necessity when travelling over mountains.
• My father snores, sometimes loudly.
• When you’re six blueberries on top of a Costco hot dog make sense and are delicious.
• US Costco chicken Cesar salads come in the same size package as in the UK, but have substantially more lettuce, chicken, and dressing inside.
• I must keep blended lattes from Costco away from the boy, as he steals sips of mine and then has problems getting to sleep.
• Lots of people stop and get out of their cars to take photos of elk crossing the highway.  I am not one of these people.
• Photos snapped through car windows never quite turn out how you plan.
• Small child + Air-conditioned pool area = Warm patch spreading across the hip while you carry him
•  For some unknown reason the hotel WiFi log in system loads a million times faster with internet explorer.
• Soda in the US with corn syrup in it instead of sugar really does taste different.
• The Boy gravitates to the middle of any bed, no matter how large or small it is.

One thing that made this trip good was the number of trees we could see out the windows. For some reason trees make me feel at home. The sight of proper forests has a way of putting me at ease almost immediately. It also reminds me of someone I used to date who tried to tell me that there were ‘too many trees’ in Oregon when he visited years ago. For the record, there are definitely not too many trees.

The number of trees we could see out the window lead to a rather cool conversation with the Boy. I asked him how many trees he thought there were. Initially he said 2000, but he quickly upped it to millions and then billions. This of course lead me to ask if he thought there were more trees or people on the Earth. He thinks the trees win, but he knows that the population of our little planet increases by 3 every second. Sometimes, I really do wonder if the Boy has a photographic memory. What do you think, are there more trees or people on this little planet of ours?