My A to Z of California
This is a series I’ve been wanting to start for a while and I saved this draft a while ago. Since it is 11.58 pm now and we just got home after driving 10 hours from SoCal back home, this is just thrown out here and I’ll get back to the fine tune tomorrow. I hope you understand!
The California Zephyr is a passenger train
operated by Amtrak runs daily between Chicago and San Francisco, coursing through the plains of Nebraska to Denver, with views of the upper Colorado River Valley, across the Rockies to Salt Lake City, and then through Reno, the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento into Emeryville/San Francisco. At 2,438 miles (3,924 km) it is Amtrak’s second longest route.Experienced travelers say the California Zephyr is one of the most beautiful train trips in all of North America. As you climb through the heart of the Rockies, and further west through the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas, you may find it hard to disagree.
Zip codes: 14 out of the 20 most expensive zip codes in the United States are in California. The most expensive zip code here is Atherton 94027, followed by Beverly Hills (90210), Santa Monica (90402) and Palo Alto (94301). That’s what I keep telling my friends back home in Germany. We do not live only in the US, we live in California and not only in California, but in the Silicon Valley. It is one crazy place here. A place where you can make more money than you even thought you could, but you still feel like a poor fella.
Zinfandel (also known as Primitivo) is a variety of black-skinned wine grape. The variety is grown in over 10 percent of California vineyards. DNA fingerprinting has revealed that it is genetically equivalent to the Croatian grapes Crljenak Kaštelanski and Tribidrag, as well as to the Primitivo variety traditionally grown in Apulia (the “heel” of Italy), where it was introduced in the 18th century. The grape found its way to the United States in the mid-19th century, where it became known by variations of the name “Zinfandel”, a name which is probably of Austrian origin.
Zayante Road is a very steep, but gorgeous road in the Santa Cruz Mountains which I partially rode up with my husband once. It’s a great ride. Zayante is actually a census-designated place with a population of 705 (I didn’t know that before). “The Zayantes, a local tribe of the Ohlone people, originally inhabited the area.”
picture on top © by zinfandel.org
This post is a part of a series called NaBloPoMo 2016 hosted by BlogHer. NaBloPoMo is short for National Blog Posting Month and it challenges writers and creatives to post on their blogs once a day (at least) for the month of November. You can find all my posts on my blogher page, too. Stay tuned!
If you loved what you read feel free to share!
