We had picked up a visitor from North Dakota in the late evening from Sacramento International Airport.

By the time we rounded up the luggage it was dark. 

You couldn’t see much in the darkness as we drive back to Manteca.

That explains why the next day as we headed toward the Bay Area via Interstate 580 to cross the 1,009-foot high Altamont Pass, he couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Wow, you guys have some tall mountains!” 

I had to smile. 

Three days later he’d be standing on top of North Dome at 7,540 feet spellbound looking down over Yosemite Valley. I could only wonder what his reaction would have been like if we’d had the time to hike to the top of Mt. Whitney at 14,505 feet.

His perception of California was based on movies and social media fixations with the old cliches of beaches, surfing, blondes, movie stars, and palm trees. 

It didn’t involve mountains or farming, which is ironic given the highest point in the 48 lower states is here and we are by far the No. 1  state for agricultural production.

When he heard Hollister was in Northern California, he was beside himself. 

We had a hard time convincing him Hollister was high and dry in the heart of a productive agricultural valley populated with farm workers and blue collar types and not surfer dudes and endless tanned girls in bikinis.

There are misconceptions floating around about every state and not just California.

But I’m willing to bet none are as wild and varied as the myths and misconceptions about California.

After an earthquake near Ridgecrest, I got an email from an acquaintance I knew from Florida only through phone conversations regarding business. 

I had mentioned the previous year that I was heading to Death Valley. She had remembered that when some of the early reports referenced the quake’ s proximity to Death Valley.

That prompted the follow email: “Hope things are OK. Heard about the earthquake. I don’t know how anyone can live in a place with earthquakes.”

I had to laugh.

California has close to 200 quakes a week of which almost all we never feel. Florida has a couple of powerful hurricanes each year. It may get to be 100 degrees here but the humidity is not flirting with triple digits at the same time.

And we can come across black bears in the mountains, but then again we don’t have to worry about alligators coming out of bodies of water in neighborhoods.

Years ago two days before Christmas, a friend from Washington, D.C., called. 

At one point in the conversation he referenced how the news said they were expecting a high of 88 degrees in Los Angeles on Christmas Day while snow was expected  along the Potomac.

He asked how could I possibly feel like it is Christmas without snow, let alone the temperature flirting with 90 degrees.

I did not point out that Roseville wasn’t part of Los Angeles and that we were dealing with the third straight day of thick tule fog. 

I also resisted the temptation to say that in California that snow  where it belongs — in the mountains.

But what I did do was point out that it wasn’t exactly freezing in Bethlehem.

Nor did I recall references to Baby Jesus wearing sub-zero thermal diapers and being wrapped in a parka in a manger ablaze with a warming fire as five wise men wearing snowshoes who could have been mistaken for the ski bums dodged falling icicles to deliver their gifts.  

My favorite expectations of what awaits in California over the years has come from overseas foreign exchange students.

One from Germany assumed Lincoln was a short drive to a sandy beach on the ocean, that everyone was blue eyed and blonde, and that all Californians were wealthy.

Then there was Ben Irwin, an Australian exchange student whose parents — once they found out Lincoln was somewhat near San Francisco — warned their son to steer clear of what they viewed as California’s anything goes drug culture. 

Ben’s first host family — a Methodist minister and his wife — made a stop on the way back to Lincoln to buy some items.

Ben later recalled as they pulled into the parking lot of Payless Drug Store that his eyes nearly popping out of his head and thinking to himself how brazen that California has large stores opening selling illicit drugs. 

In Australia, drug stores at the time were all referred to as pharmacies.

We’ve had visitors from the Midwest that couldn’t believe San Joaquin County was among the 10 top producing agricultural counties in the country or that it topped every county in the country — including California — when it came to sheer tonnage of wine grapes.

But then again, are a lot of people in California are surprised to find that out as well.

I’ve come across people who believed California has a dearth of trees, and the ones we have are mostly palms.

Forgetting for a moment the number of fruit trees we have planted in orchards dwarfs what you’ll find anywhere else on the planet.

California does have trees.

And they aren’t just your run-of-the-mill trees that might top out at 30 feet and stay around for 80 years or so.

The man-imposed imaginary boundaries encompassing the geology that is California has the:

*world’s tallest tree, the redwood known as Hyperion, the soars 380.8 feet in the Redwood National Park.

*world’s largest tree by volume, the giant sequoia known as General Sherman in Sequoia National Park at 52,500 cubic feet.

*world’s oldest tree, the bristlecone pine dubbed “Methuselah” in the Inyo National Forest at 4,856 years of age.

And there is the sophomoric jab rooted in what some might call political incorrectness.

The jab?

California is the land of nuts and fruits.

Yes, we are, and we should be proud of it.

More than three quarters of the fruits and nuts that are grown in the nation, come from California.

Every place gets painted with its share of misconceptions.

But when it comes to California, some people pile it on like there is no tomorrow.

That’s OK, though.

Let them trash the Golden State on Facebook using an I-Phone, two of the endless examples of what the world has today thanks to the much maligned California state of mind.

It’s hard to be offended when 90 percent or so of everyone in other states using the Internet “googles” — a California invention if there ever was one.

There are a lot of people who act as if they can live without California values who have no problem eating what California brings to the table or indulging in things inspired by those that  call the Golden State home.