Home Again

Made it back to Tucson yesterday afternoon. Three weeks on the CA-OR coast, missed my shop. The best part of any trip is the trip, the stuff that happens between is OK and necessary to having the trip. Or at least that is what SWMBO tells me. I don't do adult supervision very well either, it's good to be back in the shop.

As always the PNW coast is beautiful, the WX perfect with temps in the low 60's to high 70's. The critters had a blast swimming in the rivers and ocean while fetching balls.

For the drive home I made a couple of bad decisions and broke two rules of driving in CA. First rule: don't drive through LA if there is another route. Second: the same applies to San Fransisco.  My normal route to get to the PNW is get on CA 58 to Bakersfield then either I-5 or US 99 north and cut to the coast after Sacramento. That was the route going up, cutting to the coast on CA 20, BTW a good drive. CA 20 is slow going because of the curves but still enjoyable. We made the trip to Ft. Bragg in about 21 hours total road time. Not too bad pulling a 5th wheel (55 mph in CA) and traveling with two big dogs and the boss. Coming home was not quite as fast. CA 20 was shut because of a fire which caused some problems getting to I-5. All routes to I-5 and Sacramento required a good bit of back tracking. Because of timing I thought breaking the rules of travel in CA could be done with minimum consequences. Wrong Bubba, they both bit me on the ass big time. Over four hours to get through SFO and over six hours to get through LA. We spent over an hour setting dead still on I-5 in LA because of a fuel spill, once moving they dumped us off onto a surface road with no directions to get back on any freeway. GPS can be a life saver, Guy Clark's "LA Freeway" was playing in my head, without I might still be in LA. After many turns  and miles on surface roads we ended up on I-210 to join I-10 east of LA. Bottom line we spent over 18 hours to get out of LA and another eight to finish the trip.