A Very Long Day for a Short Drive

Unless you count the tumbleweeds stacked up against the fence as flowers, there were none to be had on our drive today. This shot was taken about 30 miles from Paso Robles on our drive from the Central Valley to the Central Coast.

We often break the trip from my brother's house in Northern San Diego County which is 70 miles and many hours of bad traffic from where Matt lives in Sherman Oaks. This morning it was an accident on the 210. Both cars were pulled off to the side but looked permanently joined where one had clearly plowed right into the back of another. We detoured through Pasadena without a moment for me to savor the views of my hometown.

The only thing I noticed in Pasadena was that the old main library now contains a coffee bar called Express Yourself in its courtyard. What a good idea. I spent many an hour in that library reporting my summer reading to the children's librarian, but I would certainly be very tempted to sit in that courtyard today with a coffee and a good book.

Alas, once OilMan is on the way home, he stops for nothing, so we carried on, past the blackened remains of the fire we saw burning next to the freeway on our way in, over the Grapevine and down into the Central Valley.  The temperature outside climbed to over 100 degrees, but we were perfectly comfortable in the car until we were slowed by a convoy of huge military vehicles traveling at about 20mph. And wouldn't you know it? They were taking the same road across to the coast that we planned to take. 

It's a good thing OilMan carries a map of the area in his head and knew a good way to do an end run around the convoy and get ahead of it before we rejoined the road they were on.

A trip that was supposed to take 5 hours took more like 7  1/2, but we finally pulled into our hotel. My legs felt like stumps when we finally got out of the car. We have often stayed in this hotel with Ozzie. In fact, he had his first ride in an elevator here. For a variety of reasons, he stayed behind on this trip. And a good thing too. He would have hated today's drive...

Will, who is just down the Road in San Luis Obispo has just finished his finals and is packing up an moving out for the summer. He's joining us for dinner tonight and, typically, bringing a big bag full of laundry for us to take back with us.