Two dreams about California

On Tuesday morning, I had a dream that I was watching the Holiday Bowl from San Diego's Petco Park. Later on in that dream, I was hovering over Downtown San Diego listening to Sean McDonough call play-by-play of the game between two undetermined teams. Moments later, I was hovering over the streets of Downtown San Diego in an industrial part of town where hundreds of cars were all moving in perfect harmony in and out of various parking garages and freeway on-ramps and off-ramps. In reality, I wake up and find that The Holiday Bowl as always been played at Qualcomm Stadium. There has never been a playing of that game at Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. In recent years, there have been a few bowl games that have been staged at baseball stadiums. There was the one playing of the Seattle Bowl at Safeco Field in 2001. The Insight Bowl was staged at Phoenix's Bank One Ballpark from 2002-2005. The New Era Pinstripe Bowl is at Yankee Stadium, and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is housed at San Francisco's AT&T Park. My Arizona State Sun Devils beat Navy in the Fight Hunger Bowl last weekend. This morning, I had a dream where I was back in Southern California's Imperial Valley. In the dream, the city of El Centro looked like a bustling metropolis complete with not one, but two East-West freeways. There's the longstanding Interstate 8 and another not named freeway north of Interstate 8. The Imperial Valley just East of San Diego looked like Eastern San Diego County with multiple exits within a mile of each other and restaurants like Denny's on the side of the freeway. Too bad in my dream I did not see a Cracker Barrel off the road. I saw exit signs for U.S. Highway routes like U.S. 19 and U.S. 41 and thought about how they connected from California to the Midwest. In reality, California's Imperial Valley looks nothing like a busy metropolitan area. El Centro, California is a nice go-between from Yuma to San Diego. There was a Denny's off Imperial Avenue and I-8. There are no U.S. Highways in the Imperial Valley. There is only one freeway in the Imperial Valley, and that freeway is Interstate 8. I have driven on Interstate 8 many times when I lived in Arizona and for a few times since I moved to Georgia in 2000. One day, I hope to visit San Diego and Los Angeles again and go on vacation with my wife. I want to show her Petco Park for a Padres game, the Ghirardelli Ice Cream shop for another chocolate-caramel ice cream, and take her to the beach again.