California has a multitude of national parks worth visiting and a plethora of well-known, and lesser-known, universities that I wanted to photograph their campus signs. In fact, there were several campuses I had to skip due to time constraints since I had flown to the southwest area.

While in Reno NV I planned to FINALLY visit Truckee CA. Long ago I hear what a great little town Truckee is. However, I learned that Truckee was getting snow, something it is well known for. In fact, many years ago I either read or watched some story about the special snowplo guys who plow the mountain passes in California and that Truckee is among the towns that sometimes get cut off from everywhere else for a while until the snow plowers can open their roads.

Likely I will have a need to revisit this state again someday to get the remaining colleges plus visit Lassen Volcanic and Truckee.

The lake at Chester CA south of Lassen Volcanic National Park is beautiful as are the highway 36 scenery leading to the town. Then west of Chester is where highways 36 and 32 meet. I turned from 36 south onto 32. The first 28 miles of highway 32 was all mountainous forested curvy roads. Except for one pickup truck that passed me, I had that entire stretch all to myself. It was absolutely gorgeous. I tried to get a few photos but too dark between the tall trees and snow clouds above.

Unbelievable! Up at 7,000 feet in the mountains of Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, there was no cell phone connectivity. Well!

From the highway, Lake Kaweah between Three Rivers CA and Citri CA has what I consider to be the Perfect View to have from a home. Looking down over the tops of small mountains to the huge lake then more mountains on the other side. Wow!

Parks: Death Valley, Lassen Volcanic (missed it due to snow), Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Joshua Tree

Universities: California-Berkeley, California-Davis, Fresno State, California State-Fullerton, California-Irvine, California State-Long Beach, California-Los Angeles (UCLA), St. Marys, Southern California (USC), California State-Northridge, Pepperdine, Stanford, Loyola Maryount, California-Riverside, Sacramento State, California-San Diego, San Diego State, San Francisco, San Jose State, Santa Clara, California-Santa Cruz, University of the Pacific. Thanks to all of these, I have photographed signs at 222 campuses across the US. There are still about that many yet I want to photograph out of the about 2,500 four-year institutions in the U.S.