Vacation - Day 9

The plan for the day was to drive until we got to central California, then find a motel to spend the night. Those plans would change!

We got a bit of a late start and headed out of Crescent City with our sights on the Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka. I had eaten there with Grandpa back in the '70s, and we were looking forward to their home-style, lumberjack-sized breakfast. Unfortunately, we had to stop along the way due to a false I-peed-my-pants alert, and we missed breakfast by minutes. Still, we had a very nice lunch of salad, soup, roast pork, and mashed potatoes, and David got the hot chocolate that he'd been looking forward to.

The rest of the day was mostly driving. When we got close to San Francisco, we took the impressive 5.5-mile-long Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which spans the upper arm of the bay, and we lucked out 'cause we were headed in the non-toll direction.

By the time we had cut across east to Interstate 5 south of Stockton, it was close to 7:00 p.m. Sherry and I looked at each other and said, "Should we just try to drive all the way home tonight?" So that's what we did.

The Padre game was coming in clear on XX Sports Radio 1090 AM (which I sometimes can't even pick up in our house), so listening to that kept me busy during the mostly uninteresting drive. They were playing the Dodgers, and the teams were nice enough to take the game into extra innings. The Padres eventually won just after we entered Los Angeles County.

Sherry and I swapped driving duties a couple times. Unfortunately, Sherry was behind the wheel when we got stuck in a huge traffic jam south of Burbank (somebody had flipped their vehicle), but once we got through that (around midnight) it was smooth sailing. David tried to stay awake the whole way, but fell asleep with about a half hour left on our trip. We pulled into the driveway sometime after 2:00 a.m.

Great trip!