10 Adventures in Scenery 



Charm and Fascination Await 



Now, by either route there will be desert cacti, horned 

 toads, dwarf trees, and soon irrigated valleys in which tropical 

 fruits, figs, dates, olives and strange beautiful flowers luxuriate 

 in the blazing sun. Then as the San Bernardino Mountains are 

 approached and crossed, orchards of citrus fruits greet the eye, 

 and the metropolitan city of Los Angeles soon lies ahead. 



"California, here we come!" The journey has been long, 

 but it has been interesting. The bleak and arid mountains and 

 plains have held a charm all their own. Now we are at the end 

 of the road. Ahead is the Pacific Ocean. All about us is spread 

 the great landscape of the Golden State. It is an empire of vast 

 reaches. We have passed near Mount Jacinto, whose top reaches 

 far into the sky 10,805 feet, and near by lies the Salton Sea, 280 

 feet below the level of the sea. The ocean washes a shore that 

 has but recently been lifted above the sea. Beach strands mark 

 the shore from San Diego north past the Golden Gate to the 

 rugged Humboldt coast to the north. 



The Pacific Ocean Lies Beyond 



And now we are in California, the State which has the dis- 

 tinction of the highest mountain peak in the United States and 

 of land that is below the level of the sea. The rugged mountain 

 range, the Sierra Nevada, a vast tilted block of the crust of the 

 earth, lies on the eastern side, and the younger but complicated 

 and much folded, crumpled and broken Coast Range is on the 

 west. The Great Valley 200 by 400 miles in extent lies between. 

 To the north is a vast lava-covered plain with Mount Shasta 

 and Lassen Peak as great sentinels, and to the south spreads the 

 vast desert domain of the Mojave and Colorado deserts. 



