The Drive Home

We hit the road on Monday. I wanted three days just in case we needed them since I had to be home for a meeting on Thursday. The first stretch was great. Akasha seemed happy to have Sarah sitting next to her and then slept quite a bit as well. Here was a site at the first Rest Stop we visited:

I thought it was a cool hippie bus at first, but on closer inspection, it was covered with Bible verses. I guess they could have been Christian hippies.


Sarah had a friend in San Francisco and wanted to go into the city. We cut over from the 5 and were coming into the area right around rush hour, but there surprisingly wasn't that much traffic. Had to shoot the bridge.
Sarah's friend wasn't available, so we decided to kill some time at the Sutro Bath ruins. This just happens to be one of my favorite places in the world. I hadn't been in several years and Orion had never been. I figured he would have a good time climbing around. Sarah was there once as a small girl, but she said she didn't remember them. I have a vague memory of looking over these ruins as a small child and being completely entranced. It wasn't until I was an adult that I "rediscovered" them and connected them to that memory.

It was later than I expected when we got there, but we decided to head down anyway. Here is the overall view:
My two "big kids" heading down the path.
The end of the path (at the end of the tunnel).
Heading out on the wall.
Sunset walkers
I just love the reflections in the next two.


Stairs to nowhere.
Sarah thought this seaweed looked like a snake. Apparently it was going the wrong way....
Nice beach view.
It turned out the dude *still* wasn't going to available in the evening, so we decided to go have dinner. I was going to try to find Chinatown, but I don't know Frisco well enough and didn't have a map, so we just found the 101 and headed North through the city. We found a Thai place and had a pretty successful dining adventure. I wasn't really sure where we were going to spend the night, but we were thinking of gong up through the wine country in the morning, so we ended up in Vallejo.

To my surprise and delight, Sarah offered to sleep with Orion. Here they are on Tuesday morning, still crashed out.
Akasha says, "Wake up sleepyheads!"
For some reason, I thought heading up through Napa would be a good idea. The day started OK.... Here is a nice vineyard view:
I had said we would stop at just one winery. The one we picked I wasn't too impressed with. I thought the reds were crazy overpriced for just being mediocre. But I got the funniest picture ever of Sarah and Orion. This will probably always be one of my top favorite pictures. The look on his face is just classic.
We had read about this castle, but it turned out they don't let kids go in. Lame. I wanted to at least drive in so Orion could see it. It is supposedly quite authentic. Here is my lovely out the window picture for good measure:
I didn't realize how windy the road got above the wine country! And then we hit so much road constuction on the highway back out to the 5. I swear if we would have stuck to the 5 we could have blasted the trip out in 2 days easily. As it was, we didn't even hit the Oregon border until evening. The baby started getting fussy, and we stopped several times to nurse, change diapers, comfort, but she just wasn't calming down. So I decided to go ahead and stop at Grant's Pass. I went to buy some stuff later that night and found this sign at the local market:
Am I immature for finding that really funny?

I had to get one more morning shot because I could see Sarah got experience flypaper boy on night 2.
He really does like to sleep pressed up against somebody. Ron often complains of being just about pushed out of bed by him, so I thought it was funny to see Sarah almost hanging off the edge.

Since we didn't have too far to go, we got a leisurely start and had breakfast at Denny's. Sarah snapped one of this cute little monkey.
Almost home. One of many lovely Oregon Rest Stops. I told Orion to go take a picture of the pretty fall trees while I was nursing, and this is what he took LOL. There is a bit of orange in the background there.
This was more what I had in mind. :) This was the view from where Akasha was nursing. Quite pretty.
The other good fun at this stop was an adorable boy dressed in a kilt and playing the recorder. Well, he was a young man I guess, but he seemed like a boy to me. :) He had a sign out saying he needed gas money to get to Portland. I talked to him for a bit. It turned out he was actually Scottish and was wearing his family tartan. He also had some sidewalk chalk and gave it to Orion to play with. Rachele, take note of what Sarah had started putting on the ground. This is so funny as the first thing she usually does is an ohm. She had not seen the shirt and jumper you made yet, so I really knew she was going to love them now!
Said cute boy in background.
He told Orion to keep the chalk, which he then snacked on during the rest of the drive. :sigh: Until Sarah caught him anyway. Hopefully there is nothing in the dyes that will hurt him.

Phew, it's good to be home.