Little Cat Feet

It was Carl Sandburg who said that fog creeps in on little cat feet and that kitten has been marching up and down the streets for a couple of days now. I got up at 6 a.m., before the sun came up, to take this photo for Instagram yesterday morning.

 Then as it got lighter, I could get a better view of how the fog engulfed the street.

I had a therapist appointment in Vacaville (~20 miles) at 9 a.m., which meant I would be on the freeway before the fog started to burn off.  As I headed toward the freeway on ramp, I stopped to take a photo of what I was about to head into.

I have become a nervous freeway driver under the best of conditions over the past few years anyway, but to get on the road where in spots the fog was so thick that you could barely make out the off ramp was really scary.  Especially since getting from here to Vacaville, you have to merge left three times, not just stay in the comfortable safe right lane (which disappears), and merging in the traffic in the fog made this old lady very uncomfortable.

As you drive down the freeway, you pass bare almond trees on the right and I was sorry I was on a time schedule because I would love to have gotten off to take pictures of the fog covered orchard, with even thicker fog circling the base of each tree.  It was pretty amazing.

When I drive to Vacaville, I know when I have reached my off ramp because I can see Kaiser off in the distance, but Kaiser completely disappeared and I had to trust that I was getting off at the right place. I'd only gotten off here twice before and wasn't sure the name of the off ramp--since I am so familiar with all of the names of the exits along the freeway.

But it's amazing about fog.  It does burn off as the sun gets higher.  When I got to Debbie's office, we sat there with the fog so thick you could barely see the next building, and by the end of the hour, it was clear as a bell, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was a beautiful blue and you'd hardly know there had been any fog at all.

(Well, until I got closer to Davis, where there are open fields, which are great creators of fog.)

By the time Walt left to go to the symphony in San Francisco in the afternoon, the fog was a distant memory, but I did not envy him the drive home, if it was going to start rolling in again.

Debbie tells me she drives in from the Berkeley area, so she really got the fog in spades and she said that going over the Carquinez Bridge was just awful because the fog, if possible, was even thicker.

Every time we went to London, I always thought I would experience the real thick fog that you always see in movies, but we never did.  Whoda thunk I'd find it literally right in my own back yard!