impressions: stockton

we spent about 3 months in stockton. j picked it cause it paid well, was close enough to home so we could easily go back for the holidays, and (we thought) it was close to a lot of things in norcal: bay area, napa, tahoe, yosemite, etc. 

the first thing i noticed about stockton is that it was so many big beautiful trees! i kind of couldn't believe we had spent so much time fawning over the new england foliage when it was just as gorgeous here, and maybe even more so since it had the deeper reds of japanese maples and the bright yellows of ginkos. new england mostly has a smaller range of colors, tho it has many many more trees. 

i didn't mind stockton at all, even tho it ended up not being as close to things as we had thought. coastal socal privilege means that we didn't realize so many roads would close due to weather, lol. other than it's beautiful trees tho, stockton is kind of just any other california city. i joked that it's the norcal bellflower or stanton. we also joked that it's "a plain woman who is past her prime". but seriously, it was fine. it also had a river running thru it, which, of course, i liked tho actually spent zero time at. we had a really lovely two bedroom house with a huge yard and a big ole pecan tree in the front yard. it was all very nice.

so many big leafy trees!

lots of sweet gum trees (look kind of like maple leaves), japanese maples, oaks, ginkos

big piles of leaves in the street waiting for "the claw"

big lawns

slanty residential sidewalks (so you can park half on/ half off)

more tailgating drivers

so many panhandlers...

(popular stockton trees list, and official stockton tree list as planted by the govt)